#fanfic is easier because it's anonymous. and it's not connected to my soul in the way original fiction is

[rebornofstars]

i think maybe the only way out of this mindset is to change what i define as success. when i'm rereading the story i wrote two years ago or looking through the sketchbook i was obsessed with when i was 12 i have to just grit my teeth and acknowledge that it taught me something new. even if it's just not that good. what matters is i have made something in the first place. what matters is not that i've failed to make my magnum opus, but that i've lifted the foundations a little higher for the next attempt. it's just something i have to live with. if that gap between what it is and what it could be was any smaller, i wouldn't care about it so much. finding new ways my current abilities can be improved is what gives me a sense of success, but it can become bitter when i look back at something i'm no longer in a position to edit. because i thought it was done, right? i thought it was good enough. i was blind. but the success isn't that. the success is that i had fun. the success is that i'm free to do something else now. the success is that it exists at all in the first place.

do u ever look back on something you created that you were really passionate about, and it's like. not as brilliant as you thought? like, it isn't terrible, but you know that you have the potential to do better, and you don't want it to represent your ability to Do The Thing anymore. i know it's the nature of progress and that the whole point of practicing The Thing is to get better at The Thing by pushing past your previous limits, but i find it a bit sad sometimes that i can never be entirely proud of what i've made because the goalposts are always moving. i can pass the old standards but i'll never reach the new ones