Whatever I do/create I destroy it. Right now this is happening with my playlists. And it’s absurd, because no one listens to them anyway but I keep having days when I feel like I should delete all of them. Then it’s my private notebook. Then it’s what I write, what I paint, movies I kept track of on an app, and the list goes on.
To be totally honest it’s as if I’m afraid I might be insane for keeping these things. Some contain personal things (playlists, notebook) so alright I might want to keep them private, but the real issue is that I do that when I think “oh what will they think?”. I don’t know what to do, it might sound very stupid but this has really been bothering me since forever.
I’ve hated every piece of art I ever created, and everything I ever wrote, until at least a few weeks later.
I’ve learned to control the impulse to delete, until the thing is about a month old.
But I give myself permission to delete anything older than a month old, that I still don’t like.
I also try to only delete stuff by percentage. So if I’m pruning old art or articles, I’ll enforce only deleting the 20% I dislike the most.
This way I know that any piece of work I really hate, I’ll give myself permission to get rid of, eventually, if I still really hate it, later.
I don’t know that I can help, but I used to have a blue notebook that I wrote poetry in when I was an angst teen. It probably only had a half dozen that I was really proud of, but I wish I had them still. My mom found it once and then relost it, so maybe some day when my folks are gone I’ll find it again.
Sounds like you need to learn to enjoy the process instead of the end result. Even when something is unfinished, it isn’t useless because you either enjoyed making it or it was simply practicing a skill.
