Feeling Overwhelmed_

Have you found yourself in a situation where you are trying to do many things all at once? That’s been me for a while now. From my day job, re-branding myself, staying up with current trends, learning a third language and trying to do it all efficiently, I feel like I don’t have enough hours in the day.

The truth is that I have the tendency to jump around from one project to another without finishing anything. Other times, I have too many projects in cue that I feel overwhelmed and get bored of what I’m doing. I read once that this is a very common occurrence among creatives and the necessity to keep ourselves accountable when the boredom period arrives and a new exciting idea pops in our heads. This online journal is a prime example of me dropping the ball.

I had this realization earlier this month is that for a while I was doing a few things wrong.

Following someone else’s goals_

This is probably the worse thing I was doing. I would read about a design project or I would watch either a popular designer, illustrator, or creative talking about what they were doing or the potential of any given type of specialized work and I would find that idea exciting then jump into studying the theory right away. I was basically trying to become a different person to a certain degree.

Changing goals constantly_

This was also partly a result of over consumption of information. I’m the kind of person who has a diverse variety of interests and wants to try it all. Initially, I was trying to just improve my illustration skills because I find drawing fun and relaxing, then I wanted to do some pixel art because I love point and click adventure games, after that I wanted to create my own apparel line, then I realized that web design and development had changed completely and I had to get back on the train, that lead me into obsessing over branding and strategy, the story keeps repeating itself over and over. This lead to me becoming…..

too obsessed with learning._

The internet is full of high quality content to learn anything and even for free. If you want to become a designer or a web developer, now is the best time to do so without breaking the bank. I wish I had all the current information available back when I got to this country. However, just learning the theory is not enough if there’s no practice and it’s not recurrent. I was not getting enough practice and it was not helping that I was shifting my focus constantly so there was no space for going deeper into any given subject. Learning something new was all I was doing for months. I forgot to have some leisure time.

What I’m left with is_

I was exhausted and confused. I was not sure what the next step was. I had to stop, go back to the drawing board and do a self check about what I really want to accomplish next.

There are a couple of things that are very clear and dear to me. One is that I do like to learn new things but I also like to teach what I’m learning. I used to teach and I still do from time to time. I would love to keep doing that. The other thing is that I’m not enthusiastic about client work anymore and that is because I didn’t have a criteria for the people I want to work with. Now I’m working on that.