Welcome Angela Webber of The Doubleclicks to WWdN! She’s sharing this special guest post with us while Wil Wheaton is at sea. You can get her band’s latest album, “President Snakes” on Bandcamp, listen to her comedy/RPG podcast, “Gosh Darn Fiasco,” watch her web series about cats, or follow her on Twitter and Tumblr. She is trying very, very hard to be the genuine best.
Hello everyone! As that introduction says, my name is Angela and I am a self-employed creative person. I’m in a band, I write things, I tell jokes, and I generally try to make things as much as possible. This is really really cool. But also: it’s sort of terrible. Like many creative types, I live with depression and I’m pretty bad at being self-motivated, I’m full up with imposter syndrome and I have enough negative self-talk to sink a Bucklebury Ferry (or larger water-traveling vessel, that was just the first one I thought of). But I do it—I make things all the time, and it’s my job, and I’m actually a pretty happy person these days. I’d like to share with you some of the ways I’ve found to make myself happy in a motivational post I’d like to call:
FINDING THE BEAR THAT HELPS YOU MAKE THINGS: Using negativity for positive ends
It is so easy to hang on to the negative things in life. I, just for a quick example, remember negative online comments much, much longer than positive ones. Logically, I know this is ridiculous. People who hate my stuff don’t matter, and people who like me and my art are really the ones that should care about. I tweeted something about this once, about how I wish I could remember the positive things more than the negative ones, and my friend Michael gave me some really great insight. It’s a survival instinct to watch out for the bad things more than the good ones. If you live in a forest with a scary bear and a bunch of delicious berries, you need to keep that scary bear on your mind all the time. You need to hide your food and yourself, you need to avoid the bear’s territory—and no matter how delicious those berries are, that bear is going to be bigger in your mind. This applies to internet comments, to drama, and to rejections of all kinds.
So what do we do with this, when we’re supposed to be all self-motivated and CREATIVE? How do we keep our energy up and ourselves happy? Well, I take negativity and I embrace it. If these negative thoughts, these scary bears, are the ones that are going to stick in my mind anyway, I might as well find the bears that help me. Here are some thoughts that keep me going.
