Slow Steps Forward

Self Portrait

In this post, I would like to touch on a topic that is personal, nonetheless important, part of differentiating between becoming professional and being amateur. Apologies about the long post.

It came to my interest a last year in fact and this year I invested in two books to help me resolve the matter.

While feeling anxious and turning to anxiety driven procrastination did affect my experience at Leeds Arts University, I am determined to work on this matter and over time eliminate the effect it could have on my future opportunities of working within the creative industry.

How I procrastinate:  remaining active with activities outside of University, attending societies, tidying the flat, walking my dog, working part-time or other normally positive activities. At the same time dreading some of the course tasks completely, to the point I would space myself away at even a thought of approaching my PC or opening my sketchbook. This year, I have experienced the strongest dose of this behaviour in the period before Christmas. 

In the above literature I have learnt more about this type pf procrastination and finally found a vocabulary to try to explain the cause of my situation to myself.

I have turned to this book The Worrier's Guide to Overcoming Procrastination after my second attempt at counselling with Student Welfare. Useful sessions, but I am still indecisive to what extent it is helping me to overcome my situation. I find it complex explaining my feelings - myself ending up misunderstood and misinterpreted to myself.

I have reached out to this book after Christmas 2019, when I felt desperate, my creative spirit levels were critical and my CoP LAUAN601 practical outcome has suffered greatly, as well as my pre-production for LAUAN603 and maintaining contacts after rather successful networking at MAF 2019. A week could fly by without me even knowing and whilst weekly presentations were a source of feedback for others, for me it was a source of anxiety.

I have been experiencing the pressure to keep checking my social media for messages and I ended up swapping my smartphone for a cell phone for at least a month to resolve this.

Since coming back after Christmas break, I have managed to step up and work somewhat to my expectations of myself keeping by these two in mind:

#1 I have fallen behind and so I have to do a little bit of Uni work no matter how small every day
#2 take precautions to avoid burnout (happened in the past - not good) whilst trying to work to my full ability

I would like to summarise that usually when I am self-evaluating myself I do not feel like I fit categories fully, or doubt whether I do or not. Yet, I ticked myself into almost every category in the chapter on Understanding Anxious Procrastination in the book. Some things I already was aware of - Fear of Failure, Perfectionism. Already giving me trouble at tasks in high school when I had to do any sort of estimates - now with a lot of creative freedom, it escalated enormously. I prefer rules, whole skeleton over a backbone.

I do touch on self-doubt too, especially when it comes to blogging about my work, I end up in a cycle of feeling exposed and doubting the work I have done. So far dealing with it in a form of unpublished posts or notes to write the posts later.

As well as fear of success - this is probably least obvious and hardest to talk about, but my passion for criticism and being an overthinking perfectionist sometimes leads me to isolate from the conversations to avoid accidentally hurting my relationship with peers, collaborations etc.

To add toppings to this ice cream (unhealthy yet irresistible), I often find myself with NPC when it comes to people. Many times feeling like I have nothing to say/ask/comment on or the other party won't be interested in what I have to say, or I will be very much judged on what I will say.

All in all, a lot to work on, but hey, one step closer to understanding myself. :)