Learning something new.
Ugh.
Here at The Art of Story Project, I’ve been challenged lately. My challenge has been centered around learning to do my own design work (some of it).
As The Art of Story Project picks up speed, I find myself needing graphics on the fly all the time.
This means I need to learn to do some basic design work, because I cannot always wait for a friend to help me out. There is too much to do that needs to happen quickly.
How do I want to respond to this?
I want to do nothing. I want to shut down.
This is where the interesting part comes in. You might recognize this phase of learning. AVOIDANCE.
Like most people, I hate the phase of learning where everything is new, and hard, and uncomfortable.
How do I avoid learning something new? I throw all kinds of shade; I don’t have time for this. I don’t need to know this. I can hire someone to do this for me. Maybe I can just have no graphic element and no one will notice.
All of this rabble is a defense mechanism. The fact is, I just hate it when I suck at anything, even for a little while. So I avoid it. I would rather feel successful and competent in skills I already own, then to push through, blunder a bit, and look foolish in order to find out what I can do.
Sound familiar? Do you do that?
My solution? (After I stopped pouting and doing nothing). First I learned to use a cool tool/platform called Canva (canva.com), which is a stripped down version of Illustrator (for dummies). This took a few days, but the reward was my ability to make basic design elements (custom power point slides with infographics). It was tedious, but pretty damn fun, so hey! A success!!!
Canva was a good stop-gap measure but has far less options than real design software like adobe illustrator. I needed some of those options.
Then, my husband bought me some great new fonts and I couldn’t use them in Canva. Oh the lure of shiny beautiful hand drawn letters! The itch to use the letters finally won out over my resistance to sucking.
So now I am embracing the suck! I am gloriously incompetent and slow and terrible at adobe illustrator. BUT! I am learning something new and that is the point. I am pushing through my discomfort and fear (fear of technology, fear of looking dumb, fear of bad design) and making something new. (And yes, I made the graphic below. In illustrator. And it’s far from perfect. So….yaaay me!)
What is holding you back? Is your fear of learning something new tethering you to the past?
Embrace the suck
Embrace the suck my friend. Write a new story.
Mary
