‘Trust the process,’ that phrase has and has always been something that I find very difficult to stick to because of my habit of overthinking – the problem of creating more problems that never even existed. This whole rant about my annoying overthinking habit started when (for several days now) I’ll sit down with the determination of drawing something for the day or just to improve my skill. Then instead of actually drawing, I spend the entire session just worrying and overthinking instead. Even if I manage to get something done, it’s not what I expected to do.
Questions like “What do I work on today?”, “Where do I even start?”, “What If I fail?”, “Am I even learning properly?”, “Whose tutorial should I watch on YouTube to learn how to draw this?”, “Will I ever get good at all?”, “Will doing the same thing over and over again actually make me better?” begin to pop into my head the moment I pick up the pencil. At the end of the session, I barely accomplish anything because I always run out of energy after spending a major chunk of my time battling thoughts in my head. If I’m lucky, I manage to draw something which is about the size of quarter of an A4 paper and it doesn’t feel like I accomplished anything. This same cycle always repeats itself every time and it’s so frustrating.
The same thing even happened during the period when I was starting out as a programmer. But somehow, I don’t even get bothered as much as before; I just hop on my laptop, solve a bunch of problems on CodeWars or work on some random project, and then round up for the day. I still get bothered by overthinking once in a while, but not as much when it comes to art. Initially, I would always be thinking about if I would ever get a programming job, if I would ever get good enough at programming, if I’ll even be able to handle a large-scale project if it gets to that point or what on earth I should learn next.
Maybe I’ve accepted and acknowledged those thoughts subconsciously and now I move on even though they’re there? Or maybe I’m just too busy thinking about coding that I don’t have time to overthink? Who knows? Because I certainly don’t.
This overthinking habit of mine is very draining. Instead of actually doing the work, I’m always trying to think about if I’m doing the right thing. Because of this, I end up creating problems that don’t even exist in my own mind. Sometimes, it turns out that the answer is literally in front of me but I get so lost in thought that I don’t even see it.
There are times that I just decide to use brute force and just work it off but working with an occupied mind is pretty difficult. I’ve been told several times – via friends, family members, YouTube videos, online blogs – to ‘live in the moment’ (Hearing this statement for the first time made me overthink about it too) and not worry about the future. They do help a bit; I feel slightly better after listening to them. But the moment I sit down to do what I have to do, it’s back to default settings after a while.
They say that the mind is a powerful tool depending on how you use it. But when it comes to overthinking, it makes the mind feel like a prison instead. I am so fed up with the same cycle that I face every time – attempt to draw, become overwhelmed by thoughts, get discouraged and frustrated, and repeat. A lot of times, I just don’t know what to do about it but to just do my best and march on, no matter what I think. But even with that mentality, I can’t even do that much without getting so much of my energy drained.
At this point, the only thing I'm doing is trying to push through it and hope that all these random questions in my head will find a way to answer themselves.
This is a topic that has been on my mind for a while and I figured that I might as well talk about it.
Well, that's all. Thanks for stopping by to read through the rambles of a random internet stranger.
TL;DR – I keep overthinking and worrying about a lot of things concerning my art journey and other things and IT’S DRIVING ME CRAZY!
