My book is here and I hate it.
Don’t get me wrong, it was printed exactly the way I wanted it: matt cover, french flaps, none of the pages are upside down… there’s nothing wrong with it.
This always happens when something I illustrated arrives in the mail - I wrote about it before - but I was hoping it would be different this time.
This time, I curated the book, made all the decisions about what paper, what size, how many pages… and it makes it even worse. HA!
I don’t mean to whine, but I do want to be real. It’s easy to think that if you just achieve … [fill in the blank] … you’ll feel proud and satisfied, but apparently that’s not how it works. At least not for me.
Even though I don’t quite understand it, I can’t imagine I’m the only creator in the world feeling this way. If this is relatable to you, I’d love to hear from you.
Anyway, my book is here!
Over the next few weeks, I’m going to sort out what goes where. I need to sign and sketch in some books before I can start sending them. It may take a little bit, but they’re here and there’s nothing wrong with them. :D
With love,
I've definitely felt that way after large projects. I stayed up for 2 nights to finish work on an experimental comics project years ago and ended up in a funk for months. Something I was so excited about and proud of while I was working on it left me feeling embarrassed and depressed once it was finished and out in the world.
For me, it seems to be a sense of loss. I had a single goal and all my energy knew exactly where to focus. Without that goal all my energy seems to flow into self criticism. I notice all the flaws of the previous work, worry about how the audience will perceive it. In general I end up feeling sort of aimless and that tends to be dangerous for me.
What to do about it? I dunno. Go on vacation, go for a run, start another giant thing... life's all about balance and as rewarding as completing a project can be it often just throws me off for a bit.
Pretty epic achievement, we are nowhere near close to creating a book for our comics but I'd imagining plenty of overthinking will go into it!!