Before I came to be in my current life of illustration and motherhood, I spent a handful of years in corporate graphic design. I have since opted to explore a different path, but I am grateful for all that I learned through that time and medium.
There’s this phenomenon that happens when you watch a child grow. You start out with this cute, docile, immobile, potato of an infant who eats and sleeps all the time. The docile potato is eventually replaced with an obstinate toddler with whom, to quote a tweet I once read, you have to communicate with as if they’re a little gnome from a folk tale that you have to trick into doing things because if you ask it directly, it will curse you. I haven’t experienced what comes after the obstinate gnome-cursing toddler phase, but I will keep you posted when I do.
The point being, as parents, you never really get the chance to miss the past iterations of your kids because there is always this shiny, new, latest and greatest model of your child that you get to enjoy and contend with. It’s a bit like that for ourselves, isn’t it? If we’re doing it right—continuously growing and bettering and getting to know ourselves—then we won’t have the opportunity to miss our past selves. We can thank them for all they taught us, and apply those lessons to the future.
Corporate Perfectionism to Intentional Messiness
Going to school for an art degree, I spent a lot of my time feeling anxious about what I would do after I graduated. The whole "starving artist" stigma was quite nerve-wracking at the age of 22 with nary a concept of a plan for what life might look like. After my impending graduation, I accepted one of the first design positions offered to me, largely as a safety net against that "starving artist" stigma. I didn’t even consider going the artist route; I hadn’t learned enough about myself or the differences between the industries.
Works from my film photography and figure drawing classes
My degrees are in graphic design and photography—two very different sides of the art world coin. My graphic design classes were about pixel management, brand narratives, and computer shortcuts, playing nicely into my perfectionism and attention to detail. My fine art classes were more soulful. More rejuvenating. More messy. The contrast was fun, and is something I still get to utilize in my business today. It’s also a nice metaphor for the two sides of my personality—slightly neurotic attention to detail meets cluttered, colorful, organized chaos.
In contrast, an example of the type of pixel perfection I was once helping to push around (sorry, it's probably too small to read, but that's not really the point)
How does that translate to life now? As I have gotten older, I find myself drawn to the path of intentional messiness over perfectionism. I think it might be in rebellion to all of those years I spent trying to be perfect. I still push back against perfectionism every day, and I still revel in the minutia a bit too much, but for the sake of the metaphor—the intentional messiness I'm choosing is getting my hands dirty and figuring out how to run a business; the perfectionistic mindset that has followed me throughout my design past is one that I am actively pushing to outgrow.
The shift between worlds has been slow to figure out, but the two ideologies do inform one another. I use and love both languages of art and design; they compliment and communicate with each other. While they work beautifully in tandem, one practice has to take precedence over the other. I have merely switched the hierarchy between the two.
The Importance of Finding Your Own Artistic Voice
In what seems to be an overflow of bad news day-in and day-out, I want to continue to challenge myself to outgrow the perfectionistic mindset and just start. I hope that I can be an inspiration for others to just start as well—we all have interests, talents, and expertise that can be focused and targeted into helping in our own special and specific ways. If you do the digging in your own work, in your own expertise, the next right thing to do will reveal itself.
3 comments
I do miss my old self sometimes, I agree, and cherishing our old iterations is just as important as looking ahead. I think you’re right; this essay was what I would like to manifest in the best-case scenario of my life, things that I can practically work towards so that I can hopefully look back with pride. Though, the intrusive thoughts are probably unavoidable in the grand scheme of it all 🙃 Thanks for sharing your perspective, it means a lot.
A wise young woman you are, to consciously work to let the messy side have its say more. I myself need to do more of that. It’s particularly hard to make any major life change (say, for example, to move somewhere new after 30-odd years) without giving up on the urge to control everything. Can’t; too many variables pinballing off one another.
Sometimes I do miss earlier iterations of my children and myself. Maybe it’s a side effect of being old. When I miss who I used to be, often I feel a little sad that I didn’t like and appreciate her more at the time, that I was too hard on her and had too little compassion for her. All that is probably just an articulation of what you’re working on too—living now so that you won’t have to have thoughts like that later (though I wonder if they’re avoidable :))