The Space Before Showing

// The Night Before

Last year, I finished the Creator Day video on the morning of the event - I remember it like yesterday and when I mean “finished” - I mean I felt completely finished with it. I had poured my heart and soul into the video and I've said before, it made me cry when I completed it.

I loved it - it was a really nice piece of work, one that I am proud of - it was something that I just finished in the way you close a laptop and tell yourself it’ll have to do - I actually loved something.

I remember sitting in Adobe Premiere Pro about a week before, moving clips around without really seeing them anymore, the music was close, but not quite and the pacing felt right in parts and rushed in others. There were moments I liked - really liked - but they were surrounded by things I didn’t have time to question.

And that was the problem.

I didn’t give myself time to question anything - so I crammed it all in, in the space of a few days/hours, until I'd done it and then I relaxed.

By the time it was shown, I was emotionally spent and burnt out, I poured everything into it and in a satisfying kind of way, I was proud..

// The Return

I’m back there again now - not in the same place because I am far more prepared and I've been in this situation before.. I know how to deal with it and I know what I have to do to get the film made, but I'm in the same phase.

Production mode.

Which, in reality, just means living with something unfinished for longer than feels comfortable - we all live in an 'Amazon' world - getting everything instantly and when you're carrying something around in your head, running through things when you’re driving, or in the shower, or halfway through something else - it feels like you're never getting close to getting it done when you actually are.

All of this 'flux' comes with that familiar mix: there is an excitement that something might land but it also pulls in a low-level anxiety that it might not and you're sat in a perpetual kind of nervousness that sits somewhere between the two. There is a constant flux.

I thought doing it once would take the edge off - but I can feel that same weight to it. I think it's because these videos mean so much to me, it's that pressure that I feel to deliver something special that has impact and feeling.

I think the difference this time is awareness of it - last year, I was just trying to get something over the line but this year, I’m more aware of what it represents. - it’s not just a video.

It’s a reflection of how I see things - it's my perspective on everything, it's what I notice. I don't want people to be bored, I don't want them watching something thinking it's bland and when you realise that’s what you’re putting in front of people, it changes how you approach it.

You start second guessing everything - whether you're overproducing something 'for the show' or whether it's something that actually feels honest?”

“Is this actually what I mean?”

Those are the questions that run around your head in the build up and in that 'production phase' - it's the constant second guessing and wondering if you're doing the right thing that causes the anxiety.

// The Temptation

There’s still a part of me that wants to leave it late again - it's the tendency that never leaves because that lateness then drives action and I don't have time to think. It's not deliberate but there’s something about a deadline that forces decisions, it removes the option to keep adjusting, keep refining, keep second-guessing.

You just… do.

And sometimes that’s helpful but given my experience last year, I also know what it costs. I remember having a conversation with Mark last year just a week or so before the event and I was (too) honest with him in the fact that I hadn't done the video - the panic and worry on his face made me feel even worse and then it built until I became that emotional wreck.

That’s what I don't want for this year.. this year, I’m trying something slightly different. I'm still going through the same process, with the same uncertainty on how it's all going to turn out - don't get me wrong, I will still be playing that same back-and-forth of making something and then immediately questioning it - but I won't let myself meet the finished video on the day of the event.

I want to have already seen it. Properly. I want to have watched it without thinking about the clock and I want to be able to let it breathe a little. I also want to be able to make changes because they matter, and try to not avoid them because I’ve run out of time.

It sounds obvious and sensible as I'm writing this but it's really not that simple when you’re in it.

// The Truth

I don’t think this feeling ever really goes away, the feeling of not having it finished and the constant anxiety of perfectionism and, it probably shouldn’t. I think the nerves, the uncertainty, the hesitation before showing something - those are all signs that you care about what you’re making.

That it means something beyond just being “done.” and without sounding like AI - maybe thats the point. I shouldn't want to to remove the feeling, but I need to learn how to work with it, without letting it rush me or push me to leave things too late so that it's not 'finished'.

So I’m here again - oartway through something I’m not completely sure about yet and I'm trying to give it the time it needs, without overworking it into something it’s not.

And I'm playing a 'what if' game with the future -

What would it look like to finish this…?

Not because I have to but because I want to and because the work deserves it.