A word on failure.

I know a lot of people who have a tendency to say withing their comfort zone. Designers (no finger-pointing here) who stay in a specific "style" of doing everything, cartoonists who avoid drawing difficult things (like hands and feet, or cars, or really anything) by cleverly hiding them out of the panel or behind something else. Even people who are generally overachievers seem to fall prey to this. What's funny is that this all comes down to fear - fear of failure.

"What if I become a laughing stock of my peers for failing to design something in a properly Constructivist fashion?"

"What if people realize I can only draw cool action poses, faces, and hot chicks well?"

"What if they talk about me afterwards, and I become a joke?"

As odd as this sounds, the way I get around this is by assuming I already am a laughing stock. As a chunky kid, I knew my name was both a punchline and an alternative name for cooties (the kids would tag each other and say "I just gave you Keener disease,"...no shit...), so assuming I'm ridiculed is by no means a stretch. In an odd way, this makes me work harder at the things I care about most. I am in the middle of finishing a five-issue comic series, in four completely different styles. In my opinion, the last three worked out the best. The craft is probably best in the last two, but the style of the third one is an awesome throwback to an expressionistic era of art, and it shows.

If I worried about how people would react that much, the book would ever get done, and I probably would not have pursued the opportunity to do it. Don't get me wrong, I'm still very anal about my finished product, but I know I have to release it into the wild at some time...

It should be pointed out that no matter what you do from a creative point of view, your failures will (and really should) outweigh your successes. Frank Zappa released over 80 albums in his lifetime, and while most fans enjoy the majority, not everything is a masterpiece - this is coming from a die-hard Zappa fan, mind you. Even he wrote a whole chapter in his autobiography on the concept of failure, going over a few high-concept business ventures that didn't come around. And he still did well enough to build his own state of the art home recording studio, own all his own master tapes, and hang out with (and jam with) the Chieftains up until the day he died.

The basic reasoning is this: even if you become a laughing stock, taking risks and (consequently) getting better at what you do will lead you to at least a few rousing successes, and nothing irks your naysayers more than having to give you credit for a great job - and with that comes a respect that is much stronger than any penny-ante trash talking. Besides, if you want to see some folks who really are embarrassing, go to this site (warning: NSFW) - I guarantee you'll never look this bad, no matter how spectacularly you fail at any one thing.

MK


PS: Oddly enough, the answer to most of life's problems is in a line from the 80s comedy Skin Deep. To quote the Blake Edwards screenplay (courtesy of the IMDB):

"You're scared like the rest of us. You drink too much, you chase girls much too much, and you don't use your God-given talent anymore."

Although I'd argue that the "chase girls line" should probably be "surf for porn" in this day and age for a lot of folks....

Vote Early. Vote Often.

Don't assume your favorite candidate is destined to win tomorrow (or lose tomorrow). If anything, think of tomorrow's duty as a way to stick it back to all the people who's political ads you can't stand.