The ill-fitting bra.
As my first year as a full-time Art Director comes to a close with the end of 2022, I wanted to take a moment to do some serious introspection before entering full-force into 2023. With it came the bitter realization: I am my own ill-fitting bra.
If you’ve ever worn a bra, you know how restricting they can be.
The underwires poke into your waist, the straps dig into the pressure points on your shoulders, and the cups are either far too big or far too small. They’re uncomfortable, inexplicably expensive, unflattering, and they make it a point to ruin your day.
In 2022, I came face-to-face with some incredibly hard truths about myself in my professional journey; very much like an ill-fitting bra, I poked into my insecurities, dug into all of my pressure points, and felt like the person I was trying to be versus the person I actually am, was only setting me back.
Here are some of those hard, uncomfy truths that I had to admit to the universe:
Am I the imposter?
Our good friend, Imposter Syndrome. I know we’ve all felt it. And in 2022, I FELT it.
For those who don’t know, Imposter Syndrome is defined as a psychological occurrence in which an individual doubts their skills, talents, or accomplishments and has a persistent internalized fear of being exposed as a fraud.
In my case, I let the intense pressure to achieve lead to an overwhelming sense of self-doubt. Almost everything I do, I question, which makes approval nearly synonymous with worthiness. Insecurities run rampant and I feel I’m a captive in the realm of “imposter purgatory”.
Hello, Perfectionism.
How are ya, bestie?
With the pressure to achieve paved an easy path for perfectionism to make its appearance. Sure, as a creative it’s incredibly easy to get caught up in the miniscule pixels of a piece of work; however, this isn’t that. This is debilitating. I spend far too long believing that as a professional and creative, I need to find the perfect art style, the perfect aesthetic, the perfect design process, the perfect method of organization, the perfect everything. And if I don’t, I feel like I fail.
The Anti-Cool girl.
If you’ve ever read Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn, or watched its movie, you know the concept of “Cool Girl”. In my case, it’s has nothing to do with men, and everything to do with the misleading concept of being “go with the flow”.
Listen, I can be a version of “cool girl”. I pride myself in being level-headed and open-minded. But what I can’t do, is find peace in organizational chaos: this is where “go with the flow” becomes a misleading concept in my view. I keep pretending that I can let the flow keep coming at me with endless chaotic surprises and that I can function in the mess. HOWEVER, your girl has to admit that I can’t do that anymore. My brain works better when I spend the time organizing what I’m looking at. And sometimes, that means that I need to put all of my work in a fancy presentation in order to feel like the assignment is done.
What is a “hobby”?
Someone asked me this very simple question the other day:
What do you do in your free time?
The saddest thing? I couldn’t muster an answer.
I often let professional me dictate non-professional me, which means I sacrifice the freedom to have hobbies and to find things that make me feel fulfilled outside of the work that I do. I don’t advocate for my boundaries and have a debilitating fear of embarrassing myself, which means I don’t venture out and explore the things I may be interested in. Hi again, perfectionism.
The art of self-investment
Self-investment is defined as the process of investing time, resources, and money into enhancing your own life and self-development. To supplement this, let’s reference an excerpt from Men at Arms by English fantasy writer, Terry Pratchett:
“Take boots, for example. He earned $38 a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost $50. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about $10...
But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford $50 had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in 10 years’ time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.”
What the heck does this have to do with anything, you wonder?
While in Men at Arms this conversation refers to socioeconomic unfairness, my brain instantly applied this conversation to self-investment. And in my case, 2022 professional me completely lacked this: I was the person who bought the $10 boots.. or in this sense, the $10 ill-fitting bra. I didn’t truly invest my time this past year into understanding myself through self-reflection, so the hard truths came down pretty hard when I finally did.
Since my ultimate goal by the end of this year is to take a step towards understanding who the HECK I am, personally and as a creative professional, I had to do the uncomfortable thing to rocket-boost the long journey ahead.
The Conclusion
2023 is the year where I stop being the $10 ill-fitting bra.
Imposter Syndrome, perfectionism, the Cool Girl aesthetic, work-life balance… are all hard truths that won’t go away immediately.
By choosing to reframe my mindset, invest more effort into my well-being, and be unapologetically a little more selfish, I’m believing their hold will get much lighter, and my self-support a little more stronger.
