I talk about art, design, and creativity
Lots of people want to wake up earlier. Most people won’t be able to do it.
Why? It’s not because they don’t want it badly enough, because I’m sure they want it plenty. It’s more so because everybody jumps to the end result without taking the proper steps first.
In other words, most wake up earlier without sleeping any earlier than their usual time.
It’s unsustainable.
The first step isn’t to wake up earlier, but to sleep earlier.
Everybody forgets to take the first step.
It’s easy to search up competitors or bigger players, and compare their ratings to yours.
Much harder to acknowledge and act as if the comparison doesn’t matter.
You can compare however much you want, but don’t let it get in the way of you playing your own game.
As long as we measure how well we’re doing with metrics we actually value, then we don’t have to keep up with the Joneses.
Being a girl at 23, holding a degree for design, working at a Chinese restaurant, leaning towards art my entire life, being relatively reserved and quiet, an optimist—these are all things that contribute towards my “voice” AKA who I am and my experiences.
Everything I say will reflect my own lens, and that is just my own truth.
Anybody can put words into a type box, but owning up to who you are and sharing those perspectives instead is much more difficult.
Hilariously enough, it doesn’t matter whether or not we’ve lined up all the pieces in the right order, if the font we chose is the perfect one, or even if printing CMYK turned out perfectly.
We don’t get to decide what’s good and what’s not when we share our work.
So we can fuss about the details and whether or not it’ll align with our “brand image” or Instagram layout, but the real decision makers aren’t us.
I still consider myself a shy person.
It’s no fun when you’re always reminded about how self-conscious you are and *what other people are going to think of it*, but that’s what shyness does to you.
So, who is shyness for?
I realize that shyness is a thing for the self. Kind of like a shield for when you want to get out of something you’re too embarrassed to do. Like asking that classmate to hang out, or making small talk at the cash register, or putting yourself in front of a camera.
Shyness is an effective blocking tool, as it stops us from doing the things we actually wish we could be doing.
It sucks because it doesn’t serve anybody. Not yourself, not the people you want to be talking with, not your friends, not your family. It’s a fear.
One alternative is to try whatever it is, and see what happens anyways.
Time and time again I’ve heard that we should try new things to keep us sharp/refreshed/informed/in with the times/what have you.
So I downloaded TikTok.
The reason why I know that nobody cares about how I feel and why that should be the most liberating feeling in the world is because I mustered up all the front-facing energy I could and started a food review series for my parent’s restaurant.
I uploaded it today, and it had 2 views.
All that energy, all that thinking, all that putting-off for nobody to notice.
For that reason I think I can do another episode next week.
If you want to see it, it’s @greatfountain on TikTok.
The most you can do is all you can do.
Like pushups. If you can only do 3 good ones, there’s no use in doing 30 in bad form.
Or projects. If the deadline is in an hour, then the hour is all you have.
Can you make a 5 star meal with only 2 ingredients?
The most you can do is all you can do.
Of course things could have been different only if, but it wasn’t and thats why we can’t sit on the should have’s.
The alternative is to bump the ceiling for the most you can do. Build up muscle strength, negotiate for an extension, buy more ingredients. How might it be possible to do more? And if you could, would it be worth it?
Because if the most you can do is all that you can do, then finding our limitations that can be stretched might be a good use of our time.
When in doubt, do it anyways.
When being doubted, even more reason to try.
And a side note, using our doubts to test personal hypotheses and thoughts can be the best way out of a rut.
It’s the reason why I’m trying to share more of myself in these posts.
We can doubt all we want (it’s free and limitless), but there’s only one way to find out the truth.
The reason why I’m so adamant about writing every day is because I want to become better at it.
(The doodle part is just so that I can share it on social media without looking like a complete essay).
It’s a longterm goal of mine, and this is day 172.
In terms of progress, I believe I’m a slightly better writer than when I was on day 1, which you can find if you scroll down far enough, but what I’m really excited for is the next 200.
I’m certain not every piece is going to be great, but hey—that’s why we get so much time.
What I think will happen is that the consistency in this practice will force me to go through more changes in style and delivery, which will ultimately help me find my own voice.
P.S. Speaking of consistency in practice, I’ve just launched The Habit Factory with Mikayla Koo, which is about putting yourself on day 1 and using your creative voice for you. It’s completely online and goes on for 14 days. If you’re ready to start, you can check out our website at www.thehabitfactory.space and sign up. We begin October 19th, and it’d be so great to see you there.
You can rationalize yourself out of an idea because there will always be reasons not to go forward:
not the right time, not the right people, not enough experience, too much responsibility, too big a risk, nobody would want it—“it just won’t be any good”.
We’ve gotten so good at saying no, that we forget how to ask, “But what if?”
Just suspending the idea of protecting ourselves from difference can give us one more reason to work against fear.
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