Thoughts as an Artist who can't commit to deadlines

As an artist, similar to many other artists, I criticize my work into the ground. Instead of focusing on what I did good, it's hard for my to look past what I did wrong, what I should have done, or what I should not have done. I personally struggle with deadlines, which results in me having many many ideas for various art contests I've discovered, but no finished works to submit. One of the art challenges I recently tried, a very popular one called 'Inktober', resulted in me starting strong for the first 5 days, messing up my work on the 6th day, then taking nearly 2 weeks to finish one piece of art. In the end, I decided to get 10 pieces done by the end of October, and yet I was only able to achieve 9.

There is a sadomasochistic form of self sabotage that happens in my mind when I am faced with a challenge or contest. Usually when I see the details of the challenge or contest, it is very easy for me to brainstorm ideas. I think about it for a bit, start doodling rough drafts, and mentally finalize the image in my mind in a short amount of time. This process can take all of a few hours, to maybe a couple days.

This is where the self sabotage begins.

I then nitpick over Every. Little. Detail. In my planned piece. I go over the process of how to get from idea to final product over and over again. What medium, what colors, how to achieve the the look I want. I battle between 'this is how I'm going to do this' and 'there is no way I have enough skill to make this look how I want'. My lack of confidence makes me over analyze the process until I get to the point where I feel like I can't finish the piece anyways, so why bother?

The next step in this awful cycle is to continue fighting with myself until the deadline is moments away. Instead of actually putting pencil/pen/paint/ect to paper and making the piece, I am just forming it over and over in my mind, to afraid to actually take the step and make it a physical reality. One moment I know everything I have to do to make the piece real, but the next moment I am calling myself a skill-less loser who couldn't draw a straight line if she tried. Then the deadline is right there, so I say to myself 'if I'm going to try this, I need to do it now or never' but there is never enough time for me to actually finish the piece, and I know it. So I start drawing a better rough draft, one I could improve on and turn into the final piece, and usually the deadline passes at this point, or I only have an hour or even minutes to finish so I'm just like 'oh well there went that chance'.

Originally this post was going to be about self advertisement and showing off some of my work. As I started typing, I started rambling, and somehow we ended up here with this random rant about how I fail as an artist and a human. But I know I'm not the only one who has these thoughts, these feelings, as artists who love art.

The biggest issue is overthinking it. "Just do it" applies heavily here. It's hard to be able to "just do it", but overthinking is the enemy here.