Fear of Starting

When I decided to start this blog, I wrote out many different topics I wanted to blog about and got very excited about all of them. They all sounded like good ideas, and I thought it would be nice to start off with an introduction about what my day job as a storyboard artist looks like… that is until I wrote the post.

 Putting together my work samples brought out a lot of insecurities:

• Nobody’s going to find this interesting 
• My old storyboards are garbage 
• I suck at writing 
• People will make fun of my work 

I felt like I had wasted my day on something nobody will like, and that’s where my emotions started to spiral downwards. I didn’t feel like getting out of bed the next morning, knowing I had to continue the work I started the day before, work that I didn’t like. Then I realized:

I was stopping myself before I could even begin.

I haven’t even posted anything yet and I’m already throwing ideas out? I do this all the time, especially with art. My fear of failure can prevent me from even starting. However, I’ve realized I can overcome that, by repeating this thought in my mind:

“Pretend that you have already failed. Now you can do whatever you want.”

If the worse case scenario is that I’ve failed, then what comes after failure can only be upwards of that. When that finally sticks, I can focus on creating what I really like without worrying about anything else. That’s when I start feeling good about my work again!