make something you love

Ughghghgh I am almost donnnnnnnnnnnne school. Can you even believe that? No me neither. Like I seriously can't.

I am super excited though. I feel confident and accomplished.

However,  I feel like in the hardest part of stress and deadlines I sort of lost some of that. I lost my voice. It was horrible.

I'd like to talk about that for a minute because ultimately I learned a very valuable lesson and went through a process that I think is crucial for any creative to go through.

As you would imagine, I had to show my work along the way, especially with larger semester long projects. There was an opportunity every two weeks to meet with advisors and peers and get their feedback.
While some of my peers would defend their point of view and choices, I was more receptive to the feedback. I wanted this project to be the best ever.
The hardest part of that was restarting again and again. not necessarily back to the drawing board (although that did happen quite a lot) it was revision after revision. extra meetings with the advisors, lots of emails. I was starting to feel defeated, inadequate and just worn down. And the worst part about all of this, is that throughout this time, I can honestly even say that I didn't even love it. So when I would hear confirming thoughts from my advisors I just kept going back at it again and again.

And then I broke down. I lost it. There was no specific trigger situation that comes to mind other then just I knew I didn't love it, and how could this be, and I was trying so hard, and I wanted it so bad and the stress of a looming deadline and and and it was a bad scene that Peter walked me through and I'll forever be grateful for his advice.

Make something you love.

so simple, yet I totally lost sight of it. Instead of clearing my mind and creating what I wanted I was in a continuous spin of rearranging the broken pieces.

I took a day away from it.  I think we even left the city to go home for the weekend. I needed space from it.

I came back to it with a new mind set. Make exactly what I want so that next time I am presenting the work I can defend it wholeheartedly. I was running out of time and I knew I just wanted to design something that would make ME happy. That I would be proud to show off to people.

And then guess what? I had a ROUND OF APPLAUSE after the next time I presented my work to the advisors and peer group. They LOVED it! and best of all I LOVED IT.

So the lesson I learned was to design something that I can stand behind wholeheartedly and have faith that others will love that perspective as well. By being authentic to myself and my vision I was able to come up with the best work.

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Looking back on it, I feel like this advice is a little...uh...duh!
But I truly lost sight of it.

Once I started the spiral of looking to my advisors for feedback and ultimately trying very hard to please them, I lost what was important to me.

It going to be so important to remember this, especially in the real world, with client's strong opinions and 'helpful' suggestions. I need to make sure I absolutely love it, and the rest will follow.