"Concepts"-ing - Allowing myself to have failed. | Falcon Talks
Upon reflecting on my past works...
Hi everyone,
We’ve all done it.
We’ve all put out some work out there that years, months, days, or even MINUTES later…, we feel didn’t quite turn out the way we wanted, and that it might even be… NOT GOOD. 😱1
In regards to my creative works, that’s hard for me to admit - even to myself.
For a very long time, I was adamant that everything that I had worked hard on and had released into the world was “good” - or, at least, good enough to hold at the same level as each other.
But…, that can’t be true.
I mean, can I really say that “The Decade Cycle”2 was as good as “Mulan Searches for the Medicine of Immortality”?
Even as I obsessively, for many years, kept everything that I had released available on my own website, there were always works that I would look at and subconsciously feel that they perhaps weren’t that good.
And that subconscious feeling formed an albatross in my mind, where I would, every now and then, try to justify their place on my “canon”.
Last year, I talked about “decanoning” projects and ideas that I had long since lost the passion to start/continue. But that was mostly for works that HADN’T be released yet.
To take that one step further, I now plan on relegating some of my previously released works to just being “Concepts”.
They’ll remain up and available, but they’ll be marked as a “Concept” rather than a featured work.
There are two reasons why I plan on doing it this way:
This will make it easier to highlight works that I DO feel are really good and DO feel really proud of.
Even though I now feel that these past works weren’t fully formed and aren't of high enough quality, I still feel that there are ideas and feelings in them that are worth leaving up for anyone interested - in other words, “Concepts”.
And in that way, I have allowed myself to have failed.
That all sounded a bit dramatic and perhaps a bit somber. 😅
But it’s healthy, I think, especially for someone like me who might be a bit too prideful, defensive, and perfectionistic about their creative works to admit when something that they’ve done just… didn’t work out.
That I’ve failed, and it’s okay.
Because that means I’ve lived and learned.
Thank you for reading! 🙂
Let me know in the comments below if you’ve ever obsessively held on to something that you’ve done, or if you’ve ever held yourself up to too high of a standard - that way, we can commiserate together! 😆
Bye for now!
Imposter syndrome is a real thing, but I’m not talking about that right now - I’m talking about self-reflection and doing an actual assessment on my own past works.
Which I had spent years working on the concept of, only to get this one short story out of it…
Do you ever think of revisiting those older pieces and doing a rewrite? Or do you prefer to keep moving forward with new work?