how often is it okay to fail before you start to think you're incompetent?

[rnottelovesowls]

time for blue mode, because this is a vulnerable post

i recently read a blog post called "Fail more, coward <3", where author valeria  posits that there is no such thing as a life without failing. but while i agree that no one is perfect, me being autistic means that i gain a low opinion of myself whenever i make mistakes. when i fail, i end up hating myself and thinking "why do i even bother?"

i felt this way after acquiring a CD of a video editor program built for windows 98 (anyone from the shoutbox may remember when i brought it up), only to realize on using it that, of course, its features are stupidly limited. it doesn't even have green-screen or color changing. (you were right when you said video editing wasn't good back in the day, melon...) so i was quite disappointed knowing that i spent $12 on something that i will probably never use. this, on top of several other mistakes i've made through my life and my work, have left me once again thinking "why do i even bother?"

how often is it okay to fail before you start to think you're incompetent? i would appreciate some perspectives on this

EDIT: for those of you wondering why i bought a video editor made for windows 98, it's because i've always been a proponent of "old tech is still worth using today", i wanted a video editor that was simple and not too advanced like davinci resolve, and i was fed up with capcut and all the mobile capcut wannabes with their endless bugs and useless-to-me gen AI features

[lakes]

time for

i felt this way after acquiring a CD of a video editor program built for windows 98 (anyone from the shoutbox may remember when i brought it up), only to realize on using it that, of course, its features are stupidly limited. it doesn't even have green-screen or color changing. (you were right when you said video editing wasn't good back in the day, melon...) so i was quite disappointed knowing that i spent $12 on something that i will probably never use. this, on top of several other mistakes i've made through my life and my work, have left me once again thinking "why do i even bother?"

how often is it okay to fail before you start to think you're incompetent? i would appreciate some perspectives on this

Well, I have this problem too. However there's a lot of times where you fail but it's fixable. Like for example, you can sell this CD for the money you lost & the person you sell it to might be an archivist or upload it to the Internet Archive or maybe they actually enjoy using it while you didn't.

EDIT: for those of you wondering why i bought a video editor made for windows 98, it's because i've always been a proponent of "old tech is still worth using today", i wanted a video editor that was simple and not too advanced like davinci resolve, and i was fed up with capcut and all the mobile capcut wannabes with their endless bugs and useless-to-me gen AI features[/color]

Not to recommend Kdenlive despite not being into video editing, but I heard it's "simpler" than a lot of other video editors, while still being somewhat usable. I'm sure people who actually use video editors might have better recommendations.

[Melooon]

I think if loosing $12 on an interesting, if unsuccessful, experiment is the worst failure you have to write about then you're doing pretty well

You will have far worse failures in life, ones that cost more than a bowl of pasta! The measure of a person is not how much they succeed, but how they recover after they've lost everything; but you have not lost everything, so today is a good day


As for old video editing  There was a quantum leap in PC video editing around 2006, everything from before then is more or less rubbish, complicated, and/or or you needed special hardware for it. The golden age would be 2009 to 2021, that's when they really figured out the software design and the hardware got powerful enough to keep up.

Final Cut Pro X (Mac), Adobe Premier (Mac,Win), Sony Vegas Pro (Win) are all great programs with versions from that era, and if your looking to seriously do some video stuff any will work great and you can find archives of them around ^^

[rnottelovesowls]

I think if loosing $12 on an interesting, if unsuccessful, experiment is the worst failure you have to write about then you're doing pretty well

it wasn't the worst failure of my life; it was just the breaking point. i've made people angry that i never meant to, i've said things i regret, i've bought things that i regretted after, i've lost plants and fish that i thought i was taking good care of, and i've gotten rid of things that i didn't know were important to me. i've made a lot more mistakes in my life than just buying an outdated video editor for 12 bucks. if that was the only huge mistake i'd ever made, then me calling myself incompetent just now would sound more like an overreaction than a legitimate concern. but if that's normally how i react to making mistakes, i don't even want to imagine how i'd react if i truly lost everything...

my biggest concern is, do i even have time to fail? it feels like humanity and the earth are falling apart in real time; what if, by the time i do succeed, it's too late?

(oh, and to both you and lakes: i appreciate the video editor recommendations, but i feel like now that i have this CD, i should at least try to get to know it)

[grubbyfox]

But hey, you now have a cool old software atleast! XD May I ask what software it was? I remember Pinnacle being like, the ultimate back in the winXP days, but I'm unsure how far back it goes.

For win7 and above, I use ShotCut. Its free and super easy. It's def not as advanced as DaVinci Resolve, which is like,        amazing but a bit daunting. But ShotCut is pretty easy to figure out. And whatever version I have on my Win7 works excellent.

There's also OpenShot Video Editor. Also free. I used it quite a bit on my win7 but it was prone to crashing on it and in general a bit faffy, so personally I prefer OpenShot. But both are free and fairly easy to get into. But of course not so advanced.


Anyyyyyway. I feel your post so much      I'm the same way. I had a huge crash out (I say huge because internally it was huge, but I didn't actually do or say anything to anyone lol) over a hobby of mine a few weeks ago. Like, it really really got to me in a way because I was going thru some stuff. Basically, I'm into like, making bracelets with macrame and stuff. I've been doing it for uhhh prob 15 years now, but I had a long break for a few years just mainly cause the shop I used to buy the stuff from closed down so it got pretty expensive to even make a single bracelet.

I was also into scoubious strings (the type of "macrame" knotting/braiding with those plastic strings). And I started doing that around 2006/2007 and did that for maybe 3 years until it went off market here. I picked it up again hmmmm around 2021 or something. Still during lock down I remember, because I remember making some to my sibling who was in quarantine lol.

WELL, sorry for the lore dump. I just needed to give lore about that I've been working with various threads/braiding type macrame for quite some time.

I recently lost both my oldest cats, like only 2 months a part, while still trying to grieve the other ones I lost not too long ago. (they were litter mates at the same old age.)
I came across a macrame style of bracelet where you braid a row of like paw prints, and I wanted to make this as a personal project since I no longer had any of my pets.

Man I cant even talk about this without crying lol. Anyway the tutorial was pretty easy, Ive done most of the knots and braids before, nothing too difficult. I had some thread laying around that I tested the tutorial on, and it was fine. I couldnt use the thread I had because it was a sort of thin hemp (in gaudy colors) and natural hemp thread often has these sort of blobs of string etc so it's not ideal to work with because the string is very uneven. I also had some waxed cord that was very thin that I tested it on. I did the bracelets no problem, while waiting for the proper thread to use and in colors I wanted. Easy task, no?

Well. The correct threads came. I started working on this, looking forward to making one for me and my sibling (who's cats it also was). I do the correct knots. I try and try. It goes wrong every single time. I keep having to look a the tutorial, and I can tell I am doing it correctly, and I know I do because I had been testing it many times before. But the thread just wont do what it's supposed to. It keeps coming undone, it keeps not getting tight like it should. It keeps slipping in places it shouldn't be able to slip. It doesn't sit right when I tighten the strings, etc. I try and try and try until more and more of the thread unravel and becomes unsuable and I just absolutely lost it. I threw the project in the garbage. I put the threads and every single thread/macrame/scoubidou string/anything to do with bracelets, charms, macrame, string etc into a box and decided I was done with this hobby. The anger and self hate I had within was so white hot that there wasn't even any point in like, doing anything rageful? I just felt such fury and anger and myself and everything with this ugly stupid idiotic hobby. Literally failing at tying a knot.

It also stems from I guess, just always feeling incompetent and sh*t at everything I do. Because I honestly am bad at everything that interests me.

I'm bad at stuff regarding aquascaping/terrarium scaping and the knowledge that comes with.
I'm bad at drawing and painting.
I'm bad at cross stitching
I'm bad at writing
I'm bad at gaming
I'm bad at scrap booking/making nice penpal-stationary deco.
I'm bad at literally anything I create/work with etc. I dont even mean that in the sense that "oh I will never be as good as [someone who's an absolute pro]" I mean in that I'm just awful, like, I'll play a game for 2000+ hours and I'm still failing at it like you'd expect someone who's played it for 5 hours.

Every time I sit down with a cross stich project, no matter how small the picture is, I still use way too long and somehow still get it wrong. Even though I count and count and triple check everything, somehow I still fail and bungle it.

I've been drawing since I was a kid, even went to art school for 2 years. Even as a teen drawing for hours every day, it just... was awful, ugly and wrong and weird. And it never got better. I had friends who drew as well and they'd speed ahead just getting better and better every day, making line art, scanning and working on it digitally, or just using a drawing tablet and making online comics etc. I couldn't even understand how they did it. I tried and it just, I dont understand. I cant understand how they managed to draw with tablets and still have normal lines. Mine would just be a total mess and I never understood how anyone could just "fill in" with paint the way people do when they color. I still dont understand because I cant get it to work. I always end up having to do things in like 17 weird steps that make things harder because I dont understand the tutorials and either way, my art always looks like dogwater.

I remember my dad asked me a few months back why I never drew digitally as a teen (but also now), because he knew my friends did. And I was like, well idk I just really couldn't get it. And he kept probing like huhh but you had the same stuff, right? Same software, you could scan, etc huh why didn't you just also do the same as them? And I sat there like...well idk I just sucked???? Like, everyone else was drawing each other's OCs on deviantart meanwhile I couldn't even draw a simple little chibi face, or even color it in without it looking like I used the paintbucket in Paint.

And I do want to say that, it's true, there's nothing wrong with creating art that others find ugly. And you shouldn't let it stop you that your projects aren't perfect. The drive to put something out there, to create something,let it be strong. Dont let other people's opinion stop you, because who cares. There used to be a text post or something on tumblr about just letting go and create that "ugly" imperfect art. Life is too short.

But at the same time I really get it. I get it so much. At some point, when every single thing you create is not of satisfaction to yourself. And you're not even asking for perfection. You're just asking for a bare minimum finished project.... and you keep failing over and over and either doing things wrong or messing up or whatever you're working with is too difficult, or you're just not understanding or not learning/not progressing etc... it gets to you. It kills enjoyment. Seeing your goal being crushed by your own incompetence over and over really just destroys you. At least that's how it feels to me.

When I had my huge crash out over the stupid macrame, I decided I dont want to get into another hobby. I will just sit and casually play the videogames I already suck at. I will write my sucky fics. I will draw my sucky chibi faces. But I wont get into new things because I'm so tired of the constant reminder that I am absolutely terrible at anything I touch. I'm tired of things being wrong/bad/ugly/lacking even after 10+ years of doing something. A reminder of how truly incompetent I am.

[citizenalex]

I think the whole enterprise of judging one's self as a success or failure is suspect. We are all complex beings with skills, talents, and challenges. We tend to discount the things that go well and focus on the things that don't go well. It's important to remember that we're never in control of outcomes. Things can not go to plan despite good choices. In fact, believing we can control out come is incredibly arrogant. The world is bigger and more powerful than we are. We should always measure effort, not outcome. The most important thing about outcome is what we learned from it so that we can develop skills for the next thing. There is no scorecard. None of us are getting out of this alive. We don't get to take any of it with us. The most important thing is to do what you value, strive to be the kind of person you want to be regardless of what boxes you check off. It's the direction, not the distance that's important. You are (we all are) enough.

[Noah_S]

The most important thing about outcome is what we learned from it so that we can develop skills for the next thing.

I'd go a step further, with the caveat that what I write applies to hobbies and art, not to being a kind person.

I reject the premise of competence and having becoming better at it as a goal. You don't have to be good at it to do art. You don't have to get better at it. We need to relearn doing things just for fun.

I have been informed that my drawing fits into the naive artstyle. I call it the "screw the rules and do what you want" artstyle. I don't enjoy the technical stuff about composition and perspective, so I don't do that.

[citizenalex]

I think that's fair.

[Melooon]

I have been informed that my drawing fits into the naive artstyle. I call it the "screw the rules and do what you want" artstyle. I don't enjoy the technical stuff about composition and perspective, so I don't do that

So I come from a background with a lot of fine art experience and exposure and I'm very used to the professional process of art analysis at a gallery level; and I would like to add something here.

There is a true value is mastering a craft, whatever that craft is; and mastery of a craft does not always mean technical proficiency, particularly in art. There are many very technically proficient artists who can create amazing photo-realistic artworks, that would still never be accepted in a museum quality gallery. I would say the same goes for web-craft too, there are many hyper skilled programmers who can make incredibly advanced, beautifully designed sites, that still have very little artistic or emotional value.

That's the reason why I like supporting personal sites and funky webcrafters, and why I've always advocated for simple broken sites over well planned consistent layouts. When it comes to art, mastery is about being true to oneself, and to your medium, and producing something that really matters to you - and very often the websites that do that best, are the most naive, first timer sites, made by the least experienced programmers.

However that ability to be naive is something that can be mastered, it is a skill you can develop, just like technical skill can. Becoming a great artist is about mastering your craft; its about not being serious, but it is about still taking yourself seriously and respecting what you make while you have fun.

After that, the technical stuff is just a supporting actor, it will develop naturally, and you can work on it too; but its not the point. It really break's my heart when I see a funky first timer site getting redesigned by someone into a bland layout because they've fallen down the technical trap

For you personally, there are fantastic qualities in your art that jumped out to me as soon as I saw your forum account request, (and I say that from a fine art position, not an "Im being a nice indie web person" position ), you're clearly on a path, and if you respect that, and develop what you've got, and don't give into the pressure to be technical while still mastering your style; it's worth it, and you will have fun, and you'll get a lot out of your art and your art life and I really do believe you can do that.