What to do when you hate everything you produce

You know that feeling when you’ve just poured time and effort into writing/ lettering/ painting something, but then you look down and think ‘This looks like crap. I hate it’. You’re disappointed because it doesn’t look like what you had envisioned and you feel so frustrated because you know you can do better than this.

If you’re an Instagrammer, you have two options:

• Post it
• Don’t post it.

I know you don’t want to post it. You see everyone else’s work and think that it comes so naturally to them. You think that they must be so talented and have more artistic skill than you ever will. Then you get depressed because your stuff looks nowhere near as good as them, and there’s no way you can post your work, because it’s just embarrassing. Seriously, no one wants to see my childish doodles.

If that’s the case, go to bed and sleep on it. I assure you that when you come back to it tomorrow, you will see ways to improve upon your work that you didn’t see before.

If today IS tomorrow, then post it anyway. You’ll be surprised that the things you think you hate, other people will actually like! We tend to notice and overemphasize the imperfections of our own work, rather than focus on its merits. There’ll always be something that our eye is drawn to and it’ll annoy the hell out of us. But you know what, it’s reassuring to know that when other people see your work, they’ll notice its beauty first and foremost. Often, they won’t even notice the ‘imperfections’. Trust me, there are people out there who look at your work and think ‘Wow, she/he’s really good at doing [xyz]’. They admire you. Remember that the skill you already have, is yours and there are people out there who wish that they had your skill.

It’s really, really hard to give up on being perfect and embrace the journey (and joy) of learning. Don’t be so hard on yourself.