The anxiety of doing stuff

A few weeks ago I wrote a post explaining how I had come up with #NoFilterFeb. It tracked my journey from the moment I realised there was something to be explored culturally, to having an agency come on board, right through to launching it. In this piece I said something along the lines of wishing someone had done it first or having something stop me.

Wait, let me find it.

I said:

I’ll be honest, for the first couple of days I was kind of hoping something would stop me… If someone else had come up with this idea then I could say ‘oh well at least I tried!’ But it was an open door.

A few people called me out on it and said it was a weird thing to say. Looking back, it perhaps wasn’t as articulated as well as it could’ve been, so I wanted to revisit it.

While the way I wrote it does sound odd, I think it taps into a behaviour that can sometimes happen in the early stages of having an idea.

Ultimately it comes down to a combination of fear of being wrong, anxiety of the unknown and, in a way, a sense of responsibility to see your idea through.

For me, with the filter project, I had landed on an idea that I thought represented an important topic that needed to be discussed by my peers.

The more I pushed it around I realised what I was actually talking about doing was pretty much going up against the whole media industry and the falseness of images we are exposed to en-masse.

I knew early on my project wasn’t about literal filters, that this was really just a way into a bigger conversation. But when I figured out what that bigger conversation was I couldn’t help but think “ok, so this really is big”.

I guess you could say I was a bit overwhelmed.

When I said I was sort of hoping something would stop me, what I really meant was there was a short lived moment of thinking “if someone else has already done this then I can join that crusade”. Because naturally teaming up with other people who have a similar vision is a lot easier than starting from scratch; you’ve already got your tribe.

Thankfully, this feeling of doubt was short lived. I felt like my take on the issue hadn’t really been explored in the way I thought it could have been, I wanted to make it happen in my way. At the risk of sounding a bit righteous I felt that to ignore this idea would be a cop out. At the end of the day, that was what really motivated me to keep pushing forward.

But the whole self-road block experience was quite weird.

I like to think of myself as a doer, and in most instances I am, so to find myself hesitating and looking for a reason not to do something was really foreign.

However, I’ve decided that it was a good thing to go through because it made me realise that what I wanted to do with #NoFilterFeb is something I genuinely care about.

Being scared is a good thing. It shows we feel invested in our idea and care about it being a success. When we let that fear stop us, that’s not such a good thing, but acknowledging that it’s part of the process can be a strong indicator that we are onto something worth pursuing.

I’m 9 days into February and if I’m honest I’m still a bit scared. So maybe it never really goes away.

There probably isn’t a tidy way to conclude this either. It’s one of those irritating posts that I get to the end of and think “right, and?”. But I guess if I’ve landed on the fact that this feeling of nervousness and fear doesn’t really go away then maybe an off note ending is the most apt way to finish after all. Or something like: anxiety is normal, keep doing what you’re doing anyway.