Is my work any good?

For almost a decade into my creative journey, I vehemently disliked anything I created. Loathed it. Maybe it was imposter syndrome, and maybe it was knowing that if I hated it, even if everyone else hated it, it would hurt less. It didn’t.

Strangely I feel like saying that “everyone will hate it and it sucks” is a sneaky way of getting praise, kind of like wearing a new dress and telling your friends “oh no I don’t think this looks good. I look so fat”, only so that your friends can tell you “no! you look beautiful”. Humans naturally want to oppose what someone else is saying when we are arguing. So as long as I hated my own work, other people, especially those who cared about me could not also take the same position.

This habit has gotten better in the last 5 years or so, and I do not feel nauseous at the sight of my own work, hell sometimes I see things and I even feel like they are nice, or cute or whatever. But being tolerant of my work doesn’t mean that I think of my work as having any merit or inherent “good” ness.

The idea of a good piece of creative work is inherently perpetually in tension. On one hand beauty is in the mind of the beholder and all art is subjective, but on the other hand there is a felt sense that some work is a waste of time, that it is not worth engaging with. There are good stories and bad, there are good paintings and bad, and not all of it can be explained by pure craft levels. There has to be a bit of unique “you” ness that you must add to any work that you make. Something authentically you.

That is the main reason why someone disliking the work I create can be such a hit to my soul. Lack of resonance with my work registers to my monkey mind as social rejection and the amygdala fires in all ways. But lately I’ve been feeling that this absolutist view of my work being gauged from “good or bad” lens is just too narrow. I feel like the question not only does not have a reliable answer, but also the answers are unhelpful. Saying my work is good, does not help me make better work or even similarly good work next time. Saying my work is bad only causes me to feel hurt and trying to work through that hurt, unnecessary use of my time. Both sides are a lose lose situation. So lately I have been trying to ask slightly modified questions.

Does this feel interesting to me?

Will this change how someone thinks about something?

Do I know what it is trying to do? and what I was trying to do with it?

These aren’t the most perfect questions. Somewhat can feel a bit too faffy, but in multiple domains of my life, I am finding these rigid definitions of what things are supposed to be unhelpful, and so I am trying to add new dimensions to my questions. Maybe in a few years I will have to cull down these inquiries, but as I heard years ago in a youtube video “That is a question wrongly asked” and I think thats the problem with the question “is my work any good”, it is a question wrongly asked.

So I am trying to ask more curious questions and see where that leads my work.