(last edited on April 29, 2014 at 1:25 am)
SUMMARY: I’ve decided to be a stationery designer…yay! But I’m finding it tough to put it into action, despite having the freedom to do so. I outline several stages of realizations as I drill down to a point just shy of having a to-do list.
I declared my intention to “be a stationery designer” this year, and now that the initial excitement has worn off I’m facing several realities:
- It’s going to take time. It will probably take more than a year to see how this ultimately shakes out. In the meantime, I’ll need to maintain the other business: that of being a designer/developer for interactive.
I’ll need to do the unpleasant work. The fun parts alone aren’t enough to build a support structure that will allow the stationery designer to have fun. The biggest hurdle I face is just talking to people to tell them what I can offer them. The second hurdle is putting together the supply chain and accounting methods to make sure that I’m doing OK.
I’ll need to self-motivate and execute on the unpleasant work. A lot of the work I need to do is clear in its utility, but ambiguous in process details. For example, I know I need to find and talk to retailers to expand the market for my stationery, but I’m not exactly sure what to say.
So what’s stopping me? I’m facing a mixture of uncertainty and fear: the uncertainty is in what to do, and the fear is related to rejection and appearing foolish.
Facing The Blankness
Although the above diagnosis seemed to capture the true essence of my blockage, it didn’t really help me see a solution. So, I went to Starbucks yesterday to clear my head, sitting in the corner chair with my eyes clamped shut and my hand furiously scribbling down thoughts as they occurred. The very first thing I wrote was BLANKNESS, because I had no clue what to write at first. I then dubbed it THE BLANKNESS, for emotional drama, and then realized that it is NOT malicious. It’s merely the unprocessed form of opportunity, the raw idea that need to be somehow converted into something that actually works. The feeling of blankness is like having the idea to make an incredible cake, then acquiring a bag of flour without the foggiest idea about what to do with it.- The Blankness offers no helpful suggestions.
- The Blankness does not let you know if you are doing things the right way.
- The Blankness doesn’t give a crap about what you want.
- The Blankness doesn’t want anything on its own.
- What you do with The Blankness is entirely your fault.
- To do good work in a timely fashion in a predictable manner.
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To produce longer-form, meticulous, and excellent works that stand up to scrutiny.
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To be in control of my own time and impulses, maintaining balance and sustainable productivity.
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To find the joyfulness in work, and put playfulness into my processes.
These are principles that I think will lead to the production of excellence. They do not, however, tell me what to do. So let me add some operational intention, the justification for having principles in the first place:
- To maintain a production queue of things that can be released to the world as “finished”.
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To pick specific tasks that, when they are completed, add to the assets that a successful stationery designer would have: revenue, products, delighted buyers.
Doing is Hard when You Don’t Know What to Do
I can make up some tracking forms for this, make lists, and develop some good habits to try and maintain my energies. However, I also need to acknowledge that DOING things is hard when you don’t know exactly what it is you’re doing. This is where a lot of the theory about definition and focus collapses for me. Definition and focus, I think, come in hindsight. To get to that place, my current belief is that I’m missing two qualities:
- Mental perseverance in the face of uncertainty, so you discover what you should be doing. Especially necessary when there is no recipe to follow.
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Enjoyment of the process. Necessary for maintaining maximum energy and momentum, and to some extent for excellence.
Right now, as I’m writing this blog post, I am actively fighting the mental perseverance issue. I feel myself getting very sleepy, which I have come to recognize as a physical reaction I have when doing something difficult or uncertain. Pushing past this is a decision I have to make. I have forced myself to reread this post over and over until it starts to make sense. And it IS starting to make sense, in a top-down fashion. And interestingly, I am re-energized. The mental fatigue has vanished…it was a manifestation of uncertainty, apparently. Amazing how real it feels. The lack of enjoyment, on the other hand, is something of a surprise. I’ve been seeing work as a grim exercise of willpower, not a joyful exploration and packaging of experience. If there’s anything I know, it’s that joyfulness is one of the best parts of being alive. I have tended to judge my work based on value, utility, and timeliness I can bring to my clients. While I think the sentiment is appreciated, it doesn’t lend itself to creating joy. There are a different set of attitudes and control mechanisms that go with the value/utility/timelessness formula; they may be more familiar if you think of the old contractor maxim, “cheap, good, fast: pick any two.” It’s a defensive, negotiation-based approach that I find stressful at times. I can’t get entirely away from it, but I certainly could stand to think of how joy can actively drive the work process. It is completely necessary if I’m going to make this work.
Facing Imagined Backlash
Finally, I need to make a commitment to a small set of actions. Just typing that sentence out gave rise to a boatload of doubts:- What are the right things? I want to choose the ones that give me the most bang for the buck!
- Will I mess up? Will the effort be wasted?
- Will I be mocked or judged based on what I tried to do?
- Will they work quickly and bring in revenue?
- What if people don’t like it?
- What if people think I’m wasting their time?
Coping with Feeling Stupid
I know that there are people who have no qualms about doing things like this, and it may be instructive to imagine what the process might be like for them. It might just be like riding a bike for the first time, allowing yourself to be in the noobie-fear state until suddenly you master it. And then, you are free. The resistance and fear itself are indicators of the magnitude of the reward! As a man in my 40s, I am less embarrassed about asking questions and being bad at stuff when I first start, because I already feel secure in knowing how to do some cool stuff already. However, there are areas where I am very sensitive, and I think it’s related to the desire to be accepted and to fit in. I want to matter and not feel diminished. Joining any kind of club, for example, where there are long-standing members, produces anxiety of this nature. Meeting attractive women creates a similar anxiety. The anxiety I feel in talking-up what I do comes from a lack of confidence in that my work is relevant at all. As I said, I would like to feel like I matter and am not diminished in the eyes of others. I have a few coping mechanisms.- The first is recognizing that I don’t need to appeal to 100% of the world. This is a lesson I learned from blogging and back-fitted into my social relationships. I know there are a handful of people out there, maybe 200 or so strong, that actually dig what I’m doing. That’s probably something like half a percent of all visitors. Everyone gets their half-percent, no matter what they do or are into. To put this in another perspective, how many best friends does one have? All friends can’t be best friends. There are a select few, a small percentage of the people you know, that fit in that way. You can probably “get along” with a higher percentage of people, which is nice, but they are not intimately part of your life. The same is probably true of the world of retail I’m entering. That’s just the way things are. You can only go up from your 1/2 percent audience. You just need to meet a lot of people, and show what you’re doing, and keep improving as you go.
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The second is not to take things so personally. Instead, project the positive beliefs you have outward despite what you think might be coming back. So instead of imagining that people are judging me harshly (which they may well be doing), I can instead choose to ignore them. They’re not in my 1/2 percent, or even in my 10% or 20% audience of simpatico people. That’s OK.
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When I’m faced with actual combativeness, I can see their point of view and shift into a critical mode. It becomes more of a conversation about perspectives, and agreeing to disagree without disrespecting their opinion. I often learn something. In the cases where it’s just deliberate hostility, I can recognize it and disengage the conversation. However, I do dwell on it for days, and it can be difficult to recover from. That’s when it’s good to know who is in your 1/2 percent. And have a good friend to buy you ice cream.
Conclusion
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p>So I’ve identified a bunch of shortcomings, fears, and operational flaws in my 2012 approach. Having identified them, I can see what to do. I can also see it’s nobody’s fault. I’m not going to blame myself…what purpose would that serve?
Operationally, though, I can see that there are changes to make. I have a few new mental tricks to deal with The Blankness, and I recognize I have to commit to doing some difficult specific tasks that, for one reason or another, are rooted in childhood fears and anxieties that I know everyone has.
So let’s see how this goes.
21 Comments
You are doing a major change and it is going to be all kinds of scary. It sounds like your self-doubts are ripping into you pretty deeply too. I’ve found that being snarky to your self-doubts makes a big difference to me. What is the snarliest thing you can say about what you are doing, that’s true no lying to make it worse then it is?
Wow. this reflection came just at the right time for me, as I am venturing out into a new creative area, and tend to drag my feet. I cam for calendars and got to enjoy this post as well. thanks for giving back!
~Sandi
Sandi: Glad to have been in the right place at the right time! Good luck with your new endeavor! What are you tackling, if you don’t mind me asking?
Thanks, Dave. I obtained a degree in human services and have been stuck working for 5 years in the same place, with no raise I might add. I have other developed talents in photography and genealogy, and want to take the leap into my own business. I am 57 and have no retirement. I am trying to find ways to make it work instead of giving up. I have many good ideas, but no follow-through! ~Sandi
I remember Pam Slim writing about a $100 business plan thing she was doing with Chris Guillebeau, and I wonder if you’d find that interesting? I just saw that he has released something called an “Empire Building Kit” (http://www.unconventionalguides.com/ebk.htm) that might be intriguing, as it addresses it ‘1 day at a time’. I bought one of Chris’ kits (the art one) to evaluate it a year or so ago, and found the material to be honest. The real trick, though, is getting through all those steps without losing steam! Some of the community-based aspects of his programs may help with that.
bStormhands: There’s a series of books by Harry Harrison called, “The Stainless Steel Rat”, which is my very model for snarkiness in the face of adversity, so I’m with you on that advice.
In this case, however, the adversity was in a less-obvious form to me, so it’s not like sharp pangs of self doubt…it’s more like, “WTF is going on?” followed by some theory. This would be a very good time to reread The War of Art by Steven Pressfield, who is as far as I know is the originator of the “Resistance” idea. But I thought I would try to work out things myself and see what it looked like. I find that if I can identify specific causes, that gives me something to work with.
I would describe the self-doubt as being comprised of:
Some of this is rational, but some of it is based ultimately on a fear of rejection when followed all the way to its source.
When I apply the “Why?” analysis, I end up with a chain like this:
Why don’t I want to call people cold and toot my own horn. I don’t want to do it. WHY? Uh, I don’t know what to say? WHY DOES THAT MATTER? Because I will get embarrassed? WHY WOULD I GET EMBARRASSED BY THAT? Because people might be annoyed or think I’m wasting their time? WHY IS THAT IMPORTANT? Because…I don’t like being thought of in that way. HOW DO YOU KNOW THAT IS WHAT WILL HAPPEN? Well, I don’t. But it seems likely. WHY IS IT LIKELY? I dunno…I guess it is irrational.
Having cornered myself, I can then question all my assumptions (here’s a good place to be snarky) and come up with some kind of alternative approach designed to address all those negative points.
I probably should have continued with the analysis, now that I think about it…thanks for the thought-provoking comment.
heh “The Stainless Steel Rat” is good stuff.
It sounds like the more general terror of doing something new and different and you don’t want to leave the herd because you may get eaten type fear.
Nice why-chain.
Glad I could help. You write a lot of thought provoking stuff for me too.
My guess is that it’s remembered childhood feelings of being made to feel stupid and isolated, so your diagnosis may be broadly correct. I don’t think it’s the action itself, but the social implications that I remember from childhood (which no longer apply as much today) that create the automatic avoidance behavior at a subconscious level.
I’ve been reading your blog for a number of years now, and have always loved the products that you produce. I think that you have been an underlying inspiration for a number of creative things that I have done for myself and close friends over this time. It probably also is an underlying influence for the Do-Pad (see below).
This post could not have come on a better day for me, because today I braved all of the self-doubt and insecurities that you have spoken about and did drop into a local shop to see if they would be interested in stocking the doodling notepad that I have created http://www.kyliedunn.com/2012/04/day-177-do-pad-version-2-released.html
As you can see this is Version 2, I did not have the courage to have that conversation when I published Version 1. So I guess it was a little win to go and have the conversation, but it was a hard conversation and I really wasn’t properly prepared for it – which made me feel very embarrassed.
It was so reassuring to get back from that encounter and find this post in my RSS feed. It’s made me feel a little less broken and vulnerable, because if someone who is as amazing a designer as you has these doubts and fears then it makes it alright for me to have them too.
Thank you for all of your inspiration and for this post. Kylie
I can’t place why, but this feels like a product.
(Another vote for Harrison here. His Deathworld seemed to me to be one of the better analyses of the situation in the Middle East, while being rollicking good fun.)
What feels like a product, Will?
Kylie: The Do-Pad is cool! And I’m inspired by your story of going to a store and talking to them about it to learn from it. AWESOME. And you’re right…to have these doubts isn’t just us…it’s a shared experience when doing something for the first time, by ourselves, without guidance or model to follow. Having a hard conversation is a good way to learn too…I think you should not feel embarrassed about it.
I’ve been thinking about how to approach the conversation myself. I would like to structure it to be as painless as possible for the store owner, not annoying and not trying to tie them down. But it still makes me nervous thinking about it. I may write about that process as I come up with it.
On a side note: I had no idea Lulu could make things like this! I will have to look into that some more.
Thanks for the compliment Dave, it means a lot coming from you.
I sort of knew I wasn’t prepared enough for the conversation, which is odd because I write do many briefs and other documents with work that I should have known the sort of thing that I would need to tell them. I’m going to write up a simple 1 pager about it over the weekend though, so I can email it through and potentially use it for other conversations.
For me there are two really hard bits, that are sort of related. One is the general opinion that no one would be interested in what I’ve created, and all of the positive reinforcement in the world doesn’t seem to make that one go away. The second is how do I price it? I mean I have priced it on Lulu and I am happy with that, but I don’t know what sort of markup a store would want to make and whether I am pricing myself out of their range. I know I shouldn’t care because it is what it is and my profit margin in quite small really, but this is a real sticking point for me the “am I good enough for people to pay that” – and I know I’m not alone in that.
With Lulu, it’s not perfect because I would prefer the paper to be 100gsm, that’s just my personal preference. But they do a pretty good job and it is a no risk venture since it’s print-on-demand.
Kylie: I go through the same thing, and I’ve seen the same thing with all my friends who are trying the same thing.
I think it’s a lot easier to be brave on behalf of someone else, because giving feels good. Or, in a more Machiavellian sense, there’s no personal risk (other than perhaps being judged on one’s taste) in promoting someone else. When we’re promoting or talking about ourselves, we’re putting ourselves on the line. It’s like we’re giving people blank checks to write anything they want on them, and then being responsible for cashing them unless we’re careful about who we give them to. When presenting ourselves in a public market, though, we give up that control.
It occurs to me that it’s putting ourselves on the line that is THE habit that we need to practice. And going with that is the ability to somehow distinguish between what matters personally and what matters in terms of business. For me (and it sounds like you too) they are both combined into one thing, a combination of the desire to do nice things for people and also do nice things for one’s self.
This is really what my Year of TED project is about in many ways – practising “excruciating vulnerability” as Brene Brown puts it in her TED talk. It is completely about having the courage to be vulnerable and giving somone the ability to shatter you.
I think that these things are always combined when you are talking about creative endeavours, because for me I put so much of myself into the things I create that I can’t just think of them as objects separate to myself. I know that this is stupid, and I know that some people will like the things I do and some people won’t, just like I have my own preferences.
I completely agree that this is something that needs to be practised, because by practising it I will develop mechanisms to cope with the process. But I also know that I will never find this easy and I will always be outside of my introverted-self to do this.
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I’d say the originator of resistance would be Freud (who probably “borrowed” the idea from his Orthodox Jewish ancestors (which Pressfield correctly identifies as the Yatzer Hara), who passed it onto Jung, etc., etc.
However Barbara Sher’s Wishcraft – published in the 70s – tackles resistance in a similar fashion as Pressfield. Julia Cameron also covers this material.
Thanks for the citation trail, Avrum! I haven’t read Pressfield’s book for some time, and had forgotten the details.
Trying to think if I know any Orthodox Jews to ask about this. Oh, I think I do.!
I promise to buy you ice cream.
;-D
Also, The Blankness sounded so much like the honey badger I found myself giggling a little.
Sorry, Katrina
Oki doki….reading Katrina’s comments gave me the inspiration to this post.
Is those trouble times (yes, is there anything constructive on TV anyway ?), is there any better motivation on earth than ALL the good coming from a woman who cares about a man?
The magic is all here (if you see what i mean), in the way the women are to us men, just perfect. Their feelings, a different way to bring new ideas and THE touch of what a man really need to ignite his brain and his heart… The beauty of this process, actually you don’t have to have a woman in your life (yes), just to realize you have thousand ways to surprise the one (woman) you don’t know (yet) by what you are doing…. What do you think, guyZ ?
ps : sorry for my english, i m french (haha)