suitable-to-my-neurotype
I stumbled upon Nicky Case's blog, which is a little open-source paradise on the nightmare hellscape that the wider internet has become, and fell completely and utterly in love. Among a million other concepts her work led me to which I want to engage with in more depth (as soon as I've finished packing and moving and finishing updates on my horribly overdue research proposal next week (⊙ ᴗ ⊙ )' ), she talks about completing small projects as a vehicle for learning.
(It's a simple concept, but it blew my damn mind.)
In a separate post she talks about how a long novel project is probably not going to get done because it's not very well-suited to her neurotype (read: not impossible! just not optimal). That said, her online portfolio boasts loads of amazingly creative, groundbreaking projects she has completed.
Because she kept the scope small.
Everything she said just made things click for me in a way they never have before. Why do I struggle so hard to create? Why do I spend more hours beating myself up for not having done something than actually doing it? Why do I have so many unfinished art projects? A long project isn't necessarily impossible for me – but it can definitely feel that way when someone else isn't overseeing it. So why do I chain myself to feeling bad about incomplete novels, when I've actually been known to write excellent short-form content?
All this time I've been shaming myself for not creating enough, not practising enough, when in reality I've been trying to cobble together disjointed phases of long projects, the "done" of which I usually struggle to envision, and where tracking progress becomes yet another insurmountable task that eats away at my momentum.
Rather, why don't I try something that lets me lean into my strengths, and complete small projects? Little things that let me practise, that let me finish, that let me learn.
(Thanks, Nicky Case.)