There's a type of person who is smart and gifted, and learns from early childhood to aim for the stars, because "nothing is impossible."
When life's constraints prove otherwise, this person is crushed. Unable to bend and accept flaws, they break.
Comics attract this person.
When life's constraints prove otherwise, this person is crushed. Unable to bend and accept flaws, they break.
Comics attract this person.
I see so much heartbreak among young people who were taught they can achieve EVERYTHING, if only they work hard enough. When their dreams don't come true, they reach the inescapable conclusion: they didn't work hard enough. Their elders overestimated them. They must be failures.
As children, they enjoyed creating. No longer. Now creation is a drudgery and they enjoy *having created*, if at all. Nothing they do meets their high expectations. The happiness of their early efforts is a dangling carrot that their arms will never reach again.
They were lured by well-meaning adults, and by their own talents, into a thought-trap: if A2 is better than A1, then A3 is better than A2, and A4 is therefore even better than A3, ad infinitum. Present success always falls short.
At the heart of this logic is a scaling problem.
At the heart of this logic is a scaling problem.
When we're infants, we learn to crawl. When we can crawl, we learn to walk. When we can walk, we learn to run. What next? Do we learn to levitate? Teleport? Shall we be unhappy if we stagnate at the level of "run"? No. There's a satisfactory, if imperfect, level of effectiveness.
The work of every artist we admire demonstrates this. It's all imperfect. It could all be better. But we don't care. An imperfect but potent reflection of the artist's soul is all we ask. Sure, they could have spent longer doing less but better work, but it would be unnecessary.
At some point, our favorite artists realize the perfect is the enemy of the good, so they give us the good, and we see them in it and thank them for it. To make work that satisfies you, you must accept that same challenge, trading "ever better" or "only the best" for "effective."
As kids, our challenge is to grow our skills. As adults who can write or draw adequately, the challenge shifts. Ongoing leaps of skill are welcome, but no longer the goal. That goal of endless growth is a trap. The goal now is to frankly share your perspective. This you can do.
"But I want to be the BEST!" Think of your favorite stories or images. Are they the most skillful ever made? Or are they merely skillful enough to say the thing that rings your chimes? I'd bet the latter.
