c2 lawson i know you have spoken about imposter syndrome in the past is this something you still
deal with occasionally if so how do you get past it by talking about it by normalizing it yeah i
still deal with deposit syndrome all the time of course dude yeah um it happens to everybody
it happens to everybody and i will actually tell you that some of the loveliest interactions i have
had are with people who are way more famous than i am who were delighted to jump into a conversation
about imposter syndrome yeah like people i would never have expected to feel it but of course
everybody does everybody does nobody escapes it's like the corollary of buddhist first truth um
emma gibbs have you ever this great have you ever finished a build project or cosplay costume and
upon final examination you were unhappy with it and felt you needed to scrap it
and start over again not quite unhappy with it but only upon completion okay
i get asked all the time what is my metric for success in a build is it aesthetic
fidelity is it an engineering challenge what is it and i didn't know the answer for the longest time
so i kept examining it and uh in the past few years i've realized that what i'm looking for in a
build is really specifically an experience i want a relationship a tactile and visual relationship
to the object that generates an experience that is what i was looking for and hold on
my samaritan is maybe the finest example of this yet in my making life um
i was looking for an experience of holding on to this beautiful piece that matched what i felt when
i was touring guillermo's bleak house and i held the real samaritan for you know 20 minutes and
oh wow something's wrong with it what happened
i believe
somebody dropped the samaritan and the triggers the the hammer's broken i'm gonna have to fix
that um the the young people were here playing pool recently and that may have happened on
their watch i'll bet whoever it happened to is freaking terrified to tell me about it
so many many many many times i have completed a project and looked at it and thought
that's not the experience i was going for and then i start thinking about doing that project again
i've been trying it one more time i mean i built i built five blade runner guns over the course
of my life since i was 18 years old looking for that experience um so i don't look at it as like
i failed i look at it as like not quite what i wanted okay let's keep on going
each one informs the next one i don't take it hard on the i don't take it hard that like the
experience wasn't matched because i didn't know what i needed to get that experience
i'm i'm always excited to have a clear indication of what my next step is
that is a really key thing for me as a maker i am always delighted to know what the next step is
i said this a while back on one of our videos that we were shooting i said you
don't have to know how the project's going to end you just have to know the next step
and i'm starting to think that like you shouldn't like you have to keep the
global picture in your mind but the next step is the only important step um yeah
it's a great question um all right let's see here
kev wheeler uh has a specific question about the apollo suit connector that i
did when i showed the several failures i had while milling one of the pieces he says or she says uh
i think it's e how do you get yourself back into the right frame of mind after
that kind of situation you have a process to go through to get back into the right headspace um
yeah i do it doesn't always work
you know it's like
how do you get into the right headspace i'm not exactly sure except like with practice so and by
talking about it that video you refer to when i was making the suit connectors and i screwed them
up and then i came in the next day and at the end of that shoot norm and joey and i were here and i
said you know what i want to talk to this failure so we just set up the camera and i talked about
how how unpleasant it felt to have screwed it up so many times and that i went home thinking i have
no business being a maker i didn't want to talk about that on camera that feels like a ridiculous
thing to think in my head but i also recognize that by talking about it i'm normalizing it in
a way that's important both for me and for who might be watching and feeling similar feelings um
sometimes i screw something up and i'm so upset about it i just have to leave i have to leave
the shop i won't sweep up i'm just going to go and i'll come in tomorrow and it'll be a new day
but when i'm in the right headspace like i was the other day with this screwing up that thing
on the mill when i'm in the right head space it's like i just don't feed the wolf in my head
that's angry about the situation like it's you know the emotion i'm having
is effectively like i'm mad at the dirt like there's no this what i'm mad at isn't a thing
and it doesn't necessarily change what's in front of me or the next thing i'm supposed to do
and i've gotten better over the years i'm far from perfect but let's say i feel like i'm 30
better now than i was 20 years ago at managing my emotions while building 30 better maybe 40 better
i don't even know what those percentages mean but like you know i have improved some over
time at the ability to kind of like write here's my emotion here's the next task i don't have to
worry about this that much this is the important part and when you do that actually this is really
specific when you're feeling a strong emotion if you do not feed it it really goes away in like
half an hour at the most sometimes like 15 minutes i think there's actually i'm sure someone's done a
study on how much time a high level of emotional activation remains kind of sitting there
making you crazy but seriously if you don't wind yourself up and i'm an expert at that if you
don't wind yourself up you'll notice after like half an hour that that emotional activation is
just totally gone i really have had that experience repeatedly and so i i it's something my
wife and i say to each other all the time this is what's happening this is what's happening
it's like i you know i can't be mad at the wind i said the wind can go to hell but like
what am i going to do the wind being blustery is going to ruin my day it's only so much time