Are you ever a stranger to your own creations?
There’s a way to think about your creative works as “children” – they were brought into the world by you and contain your creative DNA. And there is some of that, I’ll admit.
But in my experience, they don’t permanently feel like your children. There comes a time, with enough distance from a creative project, that your creative works can almost feel like strangers. You don’t remember all the creative choices you obsessed over, you don’t remember the premiere or release, you don’t remember all the compromises you made bringing it into the world. (There’s always compromises.)
I love meeting my creative works as a near-stranger; you can experience it almost as objectively as you would a creation you didn’t have a hand in. In those moments, you can really assess it for what it is. If there a couple moments in a work that I really like and no moments I immediately want to change, then I consider the creative work a true success.