benefit of the doubtless

(Quick note: This is my second time writing this post due to the fact that I lost the first draft in a power outage. I don't particularly care for writing the same thing over and over again, so I'm likely going to be more concise than I otherwise would be. Who knows, maybe this post will be all the better for it!)

As I've brought up a few times, self-judgement is something that frequently gives me problems whenever I'm trying to make something. A few different bloggers I follow¹ did articles on this exact topic, so I figured it's in the Blaugust spirit to continue the discussion via a response post. More specifically, I have things to say about Naithin's² post The Standards We Heap Upon Ourselves. I'm very good at coming up with somewhat-reasonable sounding excuses for my unhealthy thought patterns. This "judging myself more harshly than others" idea is one of the ones I find very sticky, and I'm going to share why both for the sake of getting stuff off my chest and in the hope that someone else out there feels seen.

We don't have full view into the lives of others. When we see someone do or create something, there's inherently a gap where assumptions can be made. For example, if you see someone buy an axe from a Lowe's or something, you don't know why they bought it. Maybe they're going to try and break into someone's house, or maybe they're helping an old lady get a fallen tree out of her driveway. I try to give people the benefit of the doubt, which is where my problems lie. I give other people the benefit of the doubt, but I don't give myself the same simply because I don't feel as though there's any doubt to give myself the benefit of. This can get kind of abstract and strange, so let me give a practical example:

I don't like how my blog looks³ I have some ideas of how to make it more visually appealing, but it's very slow going and I haven't worked on it much recently. Now, when I've visited other people's blogs and thought that the presentation could use some work, I naturally assume that they don't have the time or resources to work on it. For myself however, I have the insight to know (or at least feel like) I waste time that I could be using working on my blog's theming. I come out of the experience feeling like I'm doing a worse job then everyone else around me, even though that almost certainly doesn't match the objective reality.

This is the part of the motivational post where I'm supposed to give my solution, but frankly I don't have one yet. This is an ongoing struggle which I haven't quite resolved and robs me of the joy my hobbies would otherwise give me. I'm sure I'll figure it out at some point, but for now it's rather annoying.

Well, follow is a strong word. It's more accurate to say that I pull their blogs up when I remember blogging is a thing people do and I skim most of their articles before actually fully reading one or two. Unfortunately, I don't think there's a word for that, but knowing me I'll come up with one soon.^
Should I use the name of the blogger or the name of the blog in this situation? I've never met the guy so I doubt we're on first-name basis, but on the other hand I feel like talking to a blog is like talking to a book rather than to the author. I'll stick with name for now, but I truly have no idea.^
For the record: This has nothing to do with the fantastic framework I use. I have copied and barely modified a simple example theme from the example site, which is more a proof of concept theme than something I think anyone expected to actually be used on a blog.^