Craig Maloney ☕ ✅ is a user on octodon.social. You can follow them or interact with them if you have an account anywhere in the fediverse. If you don't, you can sign up here.

It is REALLY HARD to not think of myself in terms of what I can do. And when I run across someone who can do everything I care about better than I can, it's REALLY HARD for me to not think that it would just be better if I stepped aside and didn't bother anymore.

@noelle i relate to this so much. every time i come across someone who's doing the same thing as me it makes me want to do that thing less. the more specific that thing is the worse it is. like, someone making music that's good? not that demotivating. someone making music very similar to my music? makes me feel like the whole thing was a waste

@jk oh, Mastodon has completely turned off my desire to make music and art, and is slowly eroding my desire to write code.

@noelle @jk This. It's a struggle to not feel drowned out by so many amazing folks. But the difference is it's not you doing the thing.

This isn't a zero sum game. You have talents and perspective that we don't have. It's OK to do the things, even if someone else does them better.

@craigmaloney @noelle i really wish my brain didn't think like this, but i feel like fundamentally people only have a finite amount of time to look at stuff on the internet, so it kinda IS a zero sum game. like, at various points in my life, the more new music i've been exposed to, the less i've cared about or remembered it. i can't get that out of my head when i'm making anything, that the number of people like me making stuff is at least 100x what it was 20 years ago

Craig Maloney ☕ ✅ @craigmaloney

@jk @noelle Personal anecdote time:

I do a podcast called Open Metalcast. I listened to other metal podcasters and they seemed to do this so much better than I did. Professional shows, even. How could I compete?

But one day I said "fuck it" and just did my own thing.

One day someone else started another podcast (Rage and Frustration). I got worried. What if they were better than me?

Turns out they liked different music than I did. There was room for two CC metal podcasts.

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