Dancing to the Negative Thought Top 100
Creating mandala videos for a public art event while battling stress and ADHD; embracing imperfection and self-compassion in the process.
Two words summarize this past month: rushed and stressed. I did my best to prevent both of those things, but the creative process works on its own timeline and there’s no cure for ADHD.
But first…
This Saturday, September 7th from 7:30-9:30pm I’ll be projecting my mandala videos at the Greenway Glow, an art event along the Midtown Greenway in Minneapolis.
If you’re in the Twin Cities metro area, you can see where I’ll be located on this map.
I’m very excited as this is an opportunity to finally show my work to the public, but admittedly I bit off way more than I could chew, even with a month to get everything done.
Here’s the backstory to “rushed and stressed.”
I initially planned to create an hour of multiple videos around 3 to 4 minutes long that would loop once. After I struggled to find an hour’s worth of songs that blended well together, I reduced it down to 9 songs at 30 minutes. When I struggled to storyboard the animations, I knocked it down to 5 songs at 20 minutes. Finally, a few days ago, I knocked it down once again to 4 songs at 15 minutes. I currently have 2 animations partially done, one that’s completed and just needs some tweaking, and one that has yet to be started but is almost fully storyboarded.
The stress is not necessarily all coming from the concern that I won’t be finished in time; I’m fairly confident that I will be. It’s coming from having to expend energy toward combating the negative thought loop rather than just focusing on the work. Whenever I hit a creative roadblock, my brain sings two hits from the Negative Thought Top 100: “You Can’t Take a Break (You’re Not Done Yet)” and “If Only You Were Better At This.”
At their worst, the thoughts tell me that I shouldn’t have even bothered signing up for the event. They say that not only am I not at presentation level with my skills yet, I also don’t have the capability to balance my client work with other creative endeavors. That part is a little tougher to combat.
Having ADHD means constantly overestimating my capabilities and rarely being able to accurately predict how much time a task will take. When I’m excited, I let my enthusiasm take over and usually all common sense and laws of time and space go right out the window. I convince myself that not only can I do everything, all of it will only take a few hours. The flip side of this is quelling my enthusiasm by reminding myself that I overcommit and probably don’t have enough time to do anything. I’m well aware that there’s a middle ground between doing everything and doing nothing, however getting there mentally is really difficult.
As the deadline has gotten closer and the negativity about signing up for the event has gotten louder, I’ve had to repeatedly remind myself of three things: signing up for the event was necessary to make small steps toward the work I want to do in the future, anything I make is better than nothing, and there was no amount of planning that would’ve ever made it possible to do everything.
The silver lining is the ability to recognize all of this so I can work around it. Being able to dance to the Negative Thought Top 100 in order to keep making progress is just as important if not more important than the work itself. I’m happy with what I’ve created so far despite the frustrations and I’m excited and nervous about displaying it soon!
Until the next newsletter, be well!
Giesla
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