For years, I have been studying myself carefully and deeply, trying to understand who I am – how I think, feel, react – in order to more completely understand my identity, and more practically, how I might be able to most effectively motivate and inspire myself while addressing my glaring weaknesses. Noticing how much social anxiety was hampering my connection to others, I have repeatedly forced myself to give concerts and performances in public – around 60 in the last four years, which might be more than I had in total for my entire life until that point – and to try to speak at such events when possible. I’ve tried to attend parties where I know almost no one so that I can’t just lean upon “easy” conversations with familiar people. Even though stomach-knots and blushing cheeks are probably never going away, it’s become possible to genuinely smile and to keep my memories instead of blanking out.
Now, it is time to enter the “second phase” of self-evaluation, shifting from focusing on personality and looking into ability. When I was a child, I believed that I could be anything I wanted to be, as long as I put the effort into it. This is of course not true, but there are still many options to choose from. To this point, I have developed most of my interests and hobbies more or less simultaneously and equally to a decent amateur level, the point where the output has merit that people will acknowledge, but not crossing that threshold where it’s something notable and viable. What I want to do now is to focus “flexible time” (i.e. time when I don’t have hard commitments) onto large-scale single projects (on the order of 100-1000 hours) to test my actual, differential aptitude in various interests and hobbies and truly grasp what my limits are – it’s hard to tell with half-hearted efforts whether it’s just lack of dedication or a lack of talent that causes the perceived shortcomings.
I started out with some easy ones – last November, I tested “sequential art” through the daily drawings project. In no way am I cut out for the mechanical discipline and the steady flow of creativity needed for such endeavors, and while the result was “cute,” it wasn’t noteworthy. In December, I decided to audition to be concertmaster of one of the orchestras I play with regularly – this required learning, reviewing, and memorizing several pieces of challenging music. From this effort, I identified limitations on my ability to play with a strict tempo and to execute certain leaps reliably, no matter how many times I practiced them. On the other hand, I realized that my memory is actually not deficient or deteriorating as I had thought – I was able to memorize 40 minutes worth of music with basically no errors in the end. Additionally, after initial skin peeling and a little bleeding, I was able to build up callouses that pretty much allowed for indefinite playing, debunking my belief that I couldn’t build up the stamina to practice for hours and hours every day. However, I became rather tired of practicing 2-3 hours a day after a month or so of effort. While I didn’t get the position in the end, I was satisfied that I played with the feelings I intended, was able to mesh with the pianist despite never having played the piece with accompaniment before, and did not encounter the “cold-fingers/wandering-mind” syndrome that led me to swear to never perform solo again after high school.
Presently, I am undertaking a massive animation project (begun several months ago) that serves not only to be functional (i.e. conveying something through motion) but also artistic. While not the longest animation I’ve worked on, it involves many hand-drawn sequences, nested animations, text animation, and scripted (programmed) animation. I will go through the formal motions of working out the timing, writing out the flow, designing the characters, sketching the key animation, and then creating the final animation at a fairly high frame rate (15 fps – in the past, I’ve used 10-12). Unlike the prior two focus-projects, where I became “sick” of the required effort, I have yet to lose interest and motivation, despite the hours I have committed, and moreover I feel that the end product has, thus far, reflected the vision of what I wanted to create, whereas the sequential art and particularly the solo violin playing did fall short of what I wished to have in the end.
Following this project, next will be writing: I have a science-fiction novella sketched out, but unlike past writing projects, I will meticulously plan, edit/cut, revise/rework this manuscript. I want to see what comes out when awkward/superfluous passages get cut, the diction is tightened, and the plot arc is predetermined from the start.
I think this is going to be interesting, and out of this, I’ll have a much better idea of where my true abilities lie. Though I’ll lose confidence in the skills I know I’m limited in, I think I’ll gain confidence in those that just need the extra commitment and attention. It’s time to focus on specializing and honing what I can do well – it’s nice to have breadth and versatility, but it’s better to have certain highlights and to leave the rest as back-ups.
Short summary:
VISUAL ART:
Sequential art / Daily drawing project / Hours spent: ~80 / Fidelity to vision: 70% / Fun: 50% / Assessment of final product: 80%
Animation / Hours spent: ~200 and counting / Fidelity to vision: 85% thus far / Fun: 90% / Assessment of final product: TBD
Graphical design: forthcoming
Digital painting / Real “art”: forthcoming
Not to be tested: 3D art, fractal art
MUSIC:
Violin performance / Audition / Hours spent: ~90 / Fidelity to vision: 65% / Fun: 60% / Assessment of final product: 55%
Violin improvisation: forthcoming
Music composition: forthcoming
CREATIVE WRITING:
Novella, short story / Sci-fi story / Hours spent: ~5 / not yet underway
Not to be tested: poetry, nonfiction
Although not tabulated as such, I am also going to make big pushes in work: that is, spend focused effort on research and medicine to see what my abilities and limitations are for my chosen career path. This should be interesting, and I will try to update periodically, though the large-scale nature of these projects means that they’ll be far less frequent than in the past. I only have 2-3 hours a day to devote to non-work projects, so it may be take several months to complete each one.