So here I am again, just as I promised, although from the lack of readers I guess I’m still talking to myself. Which is fine of course, I don’t really expect anything to come of this. I wasn’t sure what to write about this week since I’m new to this whole blogging thing, so I figured I would just get some words down and that would be enough.
I suppose I’ll talk about what’s been happening with owrk, and trying not to complain too much. If you don’t know, I’m currently a Digital Marketing Apprentice who is okay at her job. Well, I’m good at the photoshop and design stuff, but not so good with writing copy or actually using social media. It’s pretty laughable that someone like me, who has actively been trying to build an audience on Instagram for three years and still hasn’t broken 100 followers, decided to join an apprenticeship for something they are so bad at. I’ve read countless blogs, books, watched YouTube videos, and now I’m on an apprenticeship and even trying to use the stuff I’m learning and it’s not really making a difference.
This will probably sound very narcissistic, and I don’t mean to be, but I’m not used to being bad at stuff. Sure when I try something new I’m not great at it, but I keep trying until I am good at it. This usually takes a few attempts for me to get decent and a few more to get good, then I stop because I’m bored of it and being not bad is good enough for me and onto the next hobby. But this, I’ve tried for years and I just don’t get it. How do people build up such a big following? How do they even make enough content to post more than once a week? I know having a full time job makes it harder to do anything, like exercise but that’s another story, but having to be creative for someone else 8 hours a day is pretty draining of my artistic brain flow juice thingys. I’ve always struggled with inspiration, mainly because I overthink things, but it’s pretty hard lately.
I’m aware that I’m probably not putting in enough effort. I hear stories off people working multiple jobs while building up their business in their free time, meanwhile here I am struggling to do one job and draw more than one thing per week and make sure it’s good enough to post on social media. I have a pretty high standard for what makes it onto my Instagram feed, and it’s only really when I’m proud of what I do that it makes it onto there. I don’t think I have imposter syndrome or anything like that but I feel like I’m failing because I rely on reference pictures to give my art structure and composition. I know I’m being hard on myself, and I need to stop comparing myself to other artists, but I have an inescapable feeling of being half-baked. It’s like I’m baking a cake and it’s in the oven nearly cooked, but then I decide that I don’t want a vanilla sponge anymore, now I want a chocolate cake, so I take it out the oven and try to mix in some cocoa powder into the molten cakey mix. Then it goes back in the oven, and then I realise I actually want it to have cherries in it too, so the cake comes out again, I mix in the cherries and so the cycle continues. It’ll be a cake, but not one that I want to eat. There’s probably some underlying issue causing this, but I don’t know, its most likely a character flaw or me being overly dramatic.
Anyway I’ve been typing for a while and my hands are getting a little chilly now, so I’m going to go and try not to wallow in my abundent committment issues. Asta la vista!
Katie Joice 