Is It Fear or Is It Standards?

My good friend called me out recently.  He didn't even have the courtesy to make small talk he just texted me out of the blue and called me out:

This text hit me at 8:46pm and it made me so uncomfortable I didn't have the ovaries to reply back until 9:27 the next morning.

Wow, look at how valiantly I tried to cover up my discomfort and shame with that thinking emoji! Good job, tvu.

Anyway. The reason I'm getting called out is because I'm sitting on a few fully finished songs that have been done for over 3 months. And for whatever reason, I refuse to hit publish.

It's not that I've never released music before. I've got two full albums to my name, and at least a half dozen singles, including one that was released a few months ago. In other words, I've gone toe to toe with that "fear of being seen", that "what if I'm not good enough?" bullshit before.

And yet here I am sitting on a pile of music I won't finish and I won't release. Plus the additional arrogance of thinking I'm immune to the "fear of being seen" / "what if I'm not good enough?" bullshit just because I've bested it before.

As an artist who reads a ton of books on creating art ^[1], I'm familiar with the concept of "Resistance". Steven Pressfield coined it in "The War of Art", and he uses it to name all the things that get in the way of you creating art. Here are some choice quotes from the man:

There is an enemy.

The playing field that you, the aspiring artist, stands upon is not level. It is stacked against you.

You are the enemy.

Resistance (self-sabotage, procrastination, fear, arrogance, self-doubt) is inside you. No one inflicts it on you from outside. You bring it with you from birth.

Resistance will kill you.

Most of us have two lives. The life we live, and the unlived life within us. Between the two stands Resistance.

Great right? I love this book. It's helped me a lot. Except that I'm starting to notice that I'm hitting a wall the more I relate to my Resistance as purely an enemy.

If Resistance is an enemy that is out to kill me, then I'm gonna shoot first. I'm not gonna listen to it. If I listen to it, it's just going to seduce me with it's sweet sweet complacency and excuses.

But what if Resistance has something useful to say? What if, when it tells me "you're not good enough", what it really means is "hey, verse 3 of Mixology is not really in pocket. you can do better."

What if I've been ignoring all this useful information because I've adopted a "we don't negotiate with terrorists" mentality to my Resistance?

See, I think I've run with this Resistance Is The Enemy thing so much that I can no longer distinguish between what is Fear and what is Standards. And the annoying thing is that they can often masquerade as the other and get in the way:

• When Fear masquerades as Standards you never release anything. How can you? You're chasing a moving target of "good enough."

• When Standards masquerade as Fear and you decide to push through without listening, then you miss a chance to hone your craft. You miss a chance to develop a dialogue with that inner artist who has some pretty good observations even if they can come off harsh.

Listen, I had some misgivings about writing this, because I didn't want to trigger boatloads of recovering perfectionists (like me), but I believe in this nuance^[2]. I've been treating my Standards like it was Resistance and therefore my enemy. I haven't been listening to her. My Standards can 100% be a bitch, but she's a ride-or-die-bitch. And we are in this motherfucker together.

Okay.

Now to get off my ass and finish Mixology. (And then publish.)