Ahhhh, the beginning of the year.  The time where I use my time wisely and try to become all productive and stuff.  Well, we’ll see how long that lasts.

I have decided that one of my resolutions this year will be to write more, to create more, but this doesn’t come without its challenges.  I recently re-listened to a quote by Ira Glass with my class where he talks about the initial gap that creators face between their early works and the works that they see others do.  If you haven’t heard the quote, it is pretty amazing and someone did a nice little piece of Kinetic Typography to go along with it:

I think I’ve been feeling like this for a while.  While, I would consider myself a strong technical person — I am not necessarily the most creative person.  I am one that can do a task well, if it is laid out for me, but coming up with something from scratch is difficult. I think a part of that is I have felt that gap between my own work and the work that I see in others.  I feel like it is one thing for a 20-year old to see that gap and have a few years to produce some work that makes up for that gap.  But here I am 32-years old, and I still find myself lagging behind — am I too old to produce good work in time?  I really feel that I have the ‘taste’ thing down.  I am able to recognize work that is good, cutting-edge, and inspiring.  And I’ve even made a few pieces that are inspired by these works that I see, but like Ira, I have felt that the pieces that I have made are still crap — that they aren’t where I want them to be.

So here I am, starting out a new year.  I have energy to boot and I am eager to get to work.  I love making films — I love creating, but honestly that gap is the biggest thing that keeps me from moving forward.  I guess here is to working on closing that gap.

Any thoughts?  What have you done to keep yourself creating work when you felt that what you made isn’t up to snuff?