The thought of what would xyz think of my work? while doing the work ruins much of the atmosphere needed to create.
There's this dilemma around the intersection of doing work for yourself or for other people. It's not that clear cut in practice, as both can be done in varying degrees of importance.
Most creative work seem to exists somewhere in between pure self-expression and public performance.
For example, why did you create this piece of artwork?
Well, because I thought it's worth sharing with you(the world).
Me? Don't you do it for yourself?
Ah yes, that's also a reason why but it can't be the only reason why for there's little intrinsic motivation to carry out the whole process of creating the work and then leave it in the basement for personal consumption alone.
Got it.
But then, I've come across those who are hesitant to share their work with the world, reasons being they can't tell whether it's good enough(quality wise) for the world or whether they're ready to handle the vulnerability that comes with putting yourself out there, which can be paralyzing.
Mysteriously Personal
I think it's an interesting spectrum of creators and their creations.
Those that see the light of day and those that don't often don't have much difference between them in terms of actual merit, other than the creator's relationship with exposure, risk, and the stories they tell themselves about readiness.
It could also well be that not everything has to see the light of day, there's a reason why night exist. Not every thought needs to become public or private currency.
But it remains to be seen where and how to draw the line, there's no rulebook for that I know of.
The decision between sharing and withholding feels both deeply personal and mysteriously arbitrary.
For myself, it's usually hard to pinpoint an outer reason why xyz work is kept on the shelf in the basement, visited periodically or not at all, left for the dusts to feast on while jkl work makes its way into the world.
My mind likes to come up with this seemingly valid excuse that it's unfinished work. Needs more refinements, less cluttering.
An inner reason that sometimes comes up is fear, specifically of not being understood or of the work being dismissed entirely.
It's this fear that sharing will somehow diminish the work, so keeping it private preserves its purity and power or so it seems.
Other times it can also take the form of the fear of simply being seen, as in standing behind something you've made and saying, "Yeap, this came from me."
In terms of having a remedy for having the anticipation of what others will think of your work influencing how you do your work, I suspect a possible answer is to make sharing a separate, later decision as opposed to a shadow that looms over the entire creative process.
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