Reassurances to Reduce Anxiety
A few thoughts on finding your voice, being unique and just trying things.
- All the things have already been said. So you can be relieved to know that There is power in repetition. It takes 7 times to drive your message home. So repetition is a good thing
2. It’s ok to be wrong. (You can edit your work later.)
3. You will not be able to consume everything. The internet is vast, and there are a lot of content published and created. Accept that there will be things you miss.
> Related to point 3, if you’re trying to clear your reading lists, podcast feed, etc. — Your inbox (email, RSS, Podcast feed) will always be full. You will not be able to keep up with all the content out there. No one who did anything remarkable placed “Updated on all the things” on their tombstone.
4. Whatever you venture out to, treat it as an experiment, a learning opportunity, that way, if it fails, you still come out on top. A corollary on this is to document your journey.
5. It’s ok to have no audience. do it for yourself. what would fulfill you the most? Most of your heroes started with zero, too
6. Don’t try too hard to make your writing unique. What makes your message unique, is your voice, your experiences and where you are right now at your life. That’s enough
7. It’s better to move either forward (or backward) the most important thing is you move. You can’t steer a parked car.
8. You don’t have to put out polished content. Quantity brings forth quality
The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality. His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the “quantity” group: fifty pound of pots rated an “A”, forty pounds a “B”, and so on. Those being graded on “quality”, however, needed to produce only one pot — albeit a perfect one — to get an “A”.
Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the “quantity” group was busily churning out piles of work — and learning from their mistakes — the “quality” group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.
9. You can’t please everyone and you don’t have to. There will be people who dislike your work, it’s ok, because if you have people that dislike your work, you will also have peopole who like what you make.
10. Just type. (and publish)
What are you waiting for then?
