My biggest weakness as a creator is my vanity.
I think it’s a holdover from my time as a musician. Or maybe I was attracted to music because of my vanity. But I like immediate feedback.
And there’s a piece of it that has to be immediate. I like when people speak about me in a more general sense of “wow the podcast is so good and influential” or “you’re a good writer” but it doesn’t quite scratch this particular itch. It’s like there’s a part of me that needs to know that the thing I’m making right now is good. Like, specifically, this thing right now in that moment.
It’s probably a subset of general creative insecurity.
In any case, it makes long term projects difficult, because you don’t get any immediate feedback. Or in situations like now, where projects are either jammed up or taking longer to launch than anticipated, you can’t put anything out to get feedback on. So to the audience or readership it just seems like you’re doing nothing. Not that I’m under the impression that people are sitting around thinking about me.
It’s worse; they’re sitting around NOT thinking about me, off reading and listening to other things.
And what is more irritating is that to fix these things I have to use non-creative skills, typically the skills I employ on a day to day at work, which puts me off of doing them because I’m already tired of doing those things.
But there’s no solution other than to eat the bitter medicine and get it done.