What I learned from leaving my comfort zone.
As an entrepreneur and director of two startups, I rarely take the time to do things outside of work. “I don’t have the time”, I tell myself. But I know this is wrong. I have the time, I just don’t take it.
Typically, I’m working on improving or learning new skills every month, practicing for up to 2 hours every morning. But this month I didn’t have the energy. So all I did was wake up, shower, eat, work, eat, work, eat, pass out for the night.
Certainly not the best routine! I’m sure some of you can relate.
So, yesterday I looked up the meetups available here in Montreal. There were two I was interested in. The first one was a meetup for writers to regroup and write at the same time. With a name like “Shut up and write”, I would assume it wasn’t a place to network. The other one was a “living art” drawing.
I wanted to do life art. But I’m an absolute beginner. All sorts of negative thoughts came to my head. What if I can’t do it? What if I make the model look bad? What if others are all pros and they criticize my effort?
For sure, I would be the “weakest” artist of the bunch. And it’s hard to swallow. When doing things in public, it’s harder to accept that you’re just not good (yet).
I signed up for it around noon that day. It was starting at 6:30 pm. On multiple occasions during the day, I thought about canceling. It’s so out of my comfort zone. And for those who don’t know (I didn’t), life art involves a nude model. I had never drawn a person, let alone someone naked.
The learning curve to become good with my current skill set is very high. This is potentially the hardest skill I could learn right now.
As the hours went by, I was more and more nervous at the idea of drawing a live person. Thankfully, it’s not the first time I put myself in that kind of situation. I actually do it quite frequently through my monthly skill learning. But this involved a naked person in a public setting, on a skill I’ve sunk in 0 hours of practice.
30 minutes before, I took a deep breath and told myself the most important question of all when you have irrational thoughts:
What’s the worst that can happen?
Honestly, nothing. Or rather, nothing that could hurt me or anyone else in bad ways. People could make fun of me, but it’s unlikely. The model could be “hurt”, but again, that’s unlikely. People could judge me for not being an artist. So what?
Alright, nothing bad can happen? I’m going!
When I arrived at the art center, I was shown where the session would happen. There were tons of beautiful paintings all over the place. Everything seemed to be perfectly drawn… what did I get myself into?
When I got into the room, the moderator actually thought I was the model. That would be some next-level stuff for me haha. Danny the naked model! :)
I told him I was here to draw and that it was my first time. I think he thought first time there, not the first time drawing. Everyone in the room was either an art student or a professional artist. When people asked me what I do, I went for the most artistic thing I do. I told them I’m a photographer. This isn’t a lie, this is just one thing I do.
We waited a few minutes for the model. During that time, I chatted with my neighbour who had come there before. She showed me drawings she worked on in other sessions (this is a recurring event). It was, of course, way out of my league. And when I asked her how long it took her to draw, she said: “3 minutes”.
What the heck?
It turns out, life art is something you do really quickly. The average time for the poses is about three minutes there. They also do longer ones near the end.
So, I have no clue how to draw ANY body part, and especially not faces, AND I was to do it all in three minutes? What a challenge…! And, until I saw her drawings, I still didn’t know it would be a naked model. Phew!
Five minutes after I sat down, the moderator made an announcement: “The model is not coming.”
My mind went: “YESS!” Pressure down!
Everyone was disappointed. That’s how they could tell I really wasn’t in my element there.
But then my neighbour volunteered to pose for us with her clothes on. I kinda liked that idea. I had spoken with her already and I wouldn’t have to deal with the naked awkwardness.
With her posing in front of everyone (but really, in front of me), I started drawing, pretending to know what I was doing. I just didn’t want her to see what I was drawing while she was posing. It wasn’t very good, haha!
Here’s my first attempt:
She did “long” poses of 10 minutes. After three poses, I was actually exhausted. There’s a lot involved in life art drawing! I knew that already, but to know it and to live it are two different things.
We took a break and everyone looked at everyone’s drawings… ugh. I had to show what I did? Oh man… I was nervous.
It turns out, it might have been my favourite moment of the event. Everyone was nice and I learned a lot from them. There was no judgment at all. On the contrary, people were amazed that a non-artist would just show up and do something like that. This broke the tension.
Plus, during the break, I chatted with the moderator, who turns out to be a massive video games geek. He plays the exact types of games I make, so that also helped me break my nervousness.
After the break, she took a pose I was not at all able to draw. The 3D perspective I had was not easy to put on paper. So for that one, I focused mostly on getting the perspective right, as opposed to having a full drawing done. It was a lot of fun.
In the end, the organizers apologized again for the model who didn’t show up, but for me, that was actually better that way. It turns out I had a great experience, and that was only possible because I kicked myself in the butt to go and do something that’s completely out of my comfort zone.
I met wonderful people, living in a world I (currently) know nothing about, who have a different perspective on things. And that, to me, was the most important thing. I went there to view the world differently.
For the past 4 months, I’ve been heads down into the development of Soul Reaper, surrounded by other video game developers. I didn’t get to interact much with people with a different mindset. It’s refreshing. Sometimes, it’s not a bad thing to be in the shoes of a novice again.
Moreover, it’s important to make it a habit to do uncomfortable things. We become complacent quickly. Yet the only way to truly thrive is to get out there and accomplish things you never thought you could. That only comes through doing things and “risking” being ridiculed.
I’m glad I didn’t sit in front of the computer to play games or watch Netflix yesterday.
What did you do recently that was completely out of your comfort zone?