White Canvas Syndrome

I ran across this post by Doug at Borderland and felt very relieved. His description of his “blogger-self” made me feel as if I’m not alone in what sometimes feels like moments of insanity. He writes about how/why he first started a blog and then describes the issues he faces with writing, editing, self-criticism, and continuation of the process.

I especially felt as if I could relate to this passage:

Complications compounded when self-consciousness itself became a matter of interest to me. The blogger-critic moved in and began to interfere with all of the other blogger-selves who are legitimately responsible for publishing Borderland. The blogger-critic is a merciless heckler, an interloper. He interferes with both the editor and the author, causing much cognitive conflict. He doesn’t monitor the blog; he monitors the blogger. His middle name is Doubt. Teachers of ZEN have spoken about the value of Doubt, and my current challenge is to make peace with this troublesome insurrectionist.

I thought I was alone in hearing those multiple voices in my head… “write about this”… “no, don’t do that… who would read THAT?!”… “should I write about this or is it too controversial? political? boring?”…

I used to hear those voices in my head when I was actively working on my artwork in the studio… It frequently led to what I referred to as the “White Canvas Syndrome.” That’s the condition where the artist stares at the blank, white canvas and just stares… afraid (or too paralyzed with self-doubt) to pick up the paint brush and make the first stroke of color.

These past few weeks I feel as if I’ve been plagued with the “White Screen Syndrome” — full of ideas, but unable to type those first few letters to start the post. Craziness.

And then I read Doug’s post… and remembered WCS which was caused by those multiple “artist-selves” in my head.

When I got to the end of his post and read the following, I shook my head in total agreement:

Personally, my faith that maintaining the discipline will lead to new understandings that will ultimately prove beneficial is what keeps me engaged. Obstacles can be used as occasions for growth if they cause us to look inward and make necessary changes.

Great (wonderful, insightful, reflective) post Doug!

Change Agency by Stephanie Sandifer is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. You may copy, distribute, transmit and/or remix this content for noncommercial uses as long as you attribute the work to Stephanie Sandifer (with link back to the original post) and agree to license the work under the same or similar license.