Doing the work (when you're afraid to)

There was a thread on Wet Canvas that really hit me where I lived. It was called "Does anyone worry about not being excellent?"

First a bit about me: I have wanted to get into art for a very long time but have only really done something about it a few years ago. I think the main thing that kept me from doing anything for so long was the fear of not being able to do well at it (like I was going to be a Rembrandt the first time I picked up a brush or something). It's safe to do nothing because you don't fail, but it's also really boring.

Anyway, some fear of failure, a dash of no decent art classes in twelve years of public schooling, a push to focus on "more important things," and here we are. It took major surgery to make me figure out that if there's something I want to do one of these days, I damned well better get to it before I run out of "these days."

My particular problem is that I get so nervous that some days (weeks?) it's hard to pick up a brush. I love going to classes but often end up intimidated because I look around and see that everyone else is so much better (I dread the beginning of a class where you have to talk about your art background and everyone else talks about how they've been drawing before they could walk and have never stopped).  Comparison is a fool's game, I know, but still...

Anyway, when I commented on the thread saying I get so nervous about it that it pulls me out of the studio, I got the nicest reply:

Ed, as far as letting it pull "studio time" away from you, I think you have to work on changing that aspect of it. I'm not saying you should be able to turn it into inspiration and not let it bother you anymore. I know it doesn't work like that.  

I fully know how you feel because I have been feeling the same feelings - probably more than ever. In fact, the older I get, the more it comes up because I'm not FRESH out of art school, or 20-something, or "now," or new, or YOUNG. Still, if you try to keep you nose to the grindstone and work despite how you are feeling, then you are opening yourself. You are being vulnerable and taking a risk that you might do a "bad" drawing or painting - and guess what? That vulnerable place is exactly where the artist should be. That's where new ideas come from, and big strides happen. It doesn't matter how late you came.

That is something I need to take to heart. I need to push through the feelings of inadequacy and just make something. If I don't put the time in, I'll never get anything out.