Reassess Your Why

Dear Creator,

Me: What did you learn today?

Him: Today was an eye opener

Me: Eh hen!

Him: I learned that too much ego, striving for perfection, being delusional has deadly repercussions. Failure is an unforgivable sin in the film industry.

This was a conversation I had with a fellow creative.

He was telling me about his new class. He went back to film school to study directing.

You must assume I started preaching to him but I didn’t, I saved it for the newsletter (wink).

I thought about what must have been responsible for that statement and our relationship with failure. Often times as creatives, we are so afraid of failure to the point that it glues us to a spot. You stare at a blank page for days afraid that the words that come from you might be wrong. You are afraid to shoot your first film because you worry it’ll be so bad your reputation will go down the drain. Because you can’t fail, you won’t be forgiven.

Years go by and you still haven’t created anything. The guilt keeps eating at you and you fall into deep depression because you can’t even begin to untangle where your dissatisfaction is coming from.

I wanted to tell my friend, maybe make films because you want to make them. I understand wanting to make a living out of it and that puts a pressure on you. But the first reason any creative endeavor has seen the light of day is because the creator simply wanted to make them. Not because they were thinking of the awards it’ll win, the people who’ll see it or any of those things but simply because they wanted to make it.

Creators often complain about how the pressure of creating for an audience or for validation stifles their creativity. They get to the point where they have to reassess their why.

Dear creator, don’t let the pressure of what the audience would like, the accolades you’ll get and the fear of failure weigh heavy on your shoulders. That is not your burden to carry. Create because the story won’t stop gnawing at you, because the words want to burst open, because your mind keeps racing with the tune while you are about to sleep.

Find a means to provide for yourself, but don’t let anyone tell you you have failed because your work doesn’t meet their standard. The right measure of your work is your inner compass.?