Moments of doubt

We all meet people in our lives. All kinds of people, with a broad spectrum of personalities.

One kind of personality has always fascinated me; the self-confident person. I often lack self-confidence, and I'm intensely fascinated by those who have it. Especially those who have it in spades.

Sometimes I think confidence is a matter of perspective. I am a hypercritical person, and I often reduce the things I create into nothingness, smashing them down into their most basic atoms until they seem like the least interesting things that have ever existed.

Sometimes later I look at the same thing, and I can't understand why I was so unhappy with it.

Here's a good example. Happy cloud picture, right?



Sunset, nice colors, pretty clouds. As I look at it, I immediately wonder if I could frame it better. I think that perhaps I could darken it a touch in Photoshop or crop it somehow. I wonder if I could have cut out the dark silhouettes of the trees. I wish I had tried another angle.

Within seconds, I have deconstructed the photo and completely dismissed it as any sort of creation whatsoever. I feel bad, and then I try to console myself. I think, oh, but I took this with a camera phone, so it's good for a camera phone. And then I say, but my camera phone is pretty good, so it's just that I didn't do it right. And so on and so on, until the simple act of trying to record the beauty of the sunset has been reduced to a disappointment.

Later on I'll look at the photo again and think, hey, that's not so bad! And the spiral down will start again as I begin to deconstruct it once more. Unless I'm in a good mood, in which case I might be able to bypass the spiral.

I do the same thing while designing. I think, oh, this has been done before. Or I think, oh, this is too simple, no one will want to buy this. Or what was I thinking when I sat down to make this, because this is not going to change the world and bring tears of wonder to anyone's eyes.

Sometimes, though, it doesn't have to. I think perhaps confidence comes from balancing the inner critic with the needs of the soul. Sometimes a piece of jewelry doesn't have to change the world; sometimes a photo of a cloud doesn't have to reduce one to tears. Sometimes it's okay to just take the picture, and enjoy it for what it is, flaws and all.