If you’re anything like me, your list of projects is endless. The ones you want to do. The ones you have supplies for but haven’t started. The ones you have started but haven’t finished, and maybe won’t. Then there’s ones you do finish.
Two Christmas’ ago I got patterns and enough fabric to make 2 skirts and a shawl. I kept saying “I need to make my skirts.” Finally I tell Husband I am afraid to screw them up because I haven’t done much sewing and he says “the worst thing that can happen to that fabric is nothing.” I think I had the fabric cut and pinned for 1 skirt 2 days later. I got it finished and it’s not perfect, but it has been a nice addition to my pile of skirts. I still need to finish the other one, but it’s not so much fear that has that lower down on my to do list.
The hardest for me are the ones I get really excited about in the beginning, and then my motivation for them just gets stuck somewhere. I haven’t quite learned how to press forward and make a specific piece of art even though I feel uninspired. That’s kind of a problem. I’m currently behind on a calendar project that is like this. I’ve convinced myself it won’t probably go anywhere, so I haven’t been able to get motivated to do the next month’s image. I had a plan to do them all as kind of a rough draft, but I still haven’t pushed forward. My Honey Bee Stakes image is part of that project. That’s a struggle that I have for personal projects.
There’s also not working on something because it’s a “waste of time.” I struggle with this one a lot. It has been hard to convince myself that doing art is not wasting time. I Probably have trouble with this one because when I was a teenager procrastinating was done by drawing, and therefore drawing was wasting time. Husband has been helping me with this one a lot lately. It’s always easy to find something that is more urgent to do than art. At least, almost always.
I have quite a few unfinished projects around the house. Not as many that have not been started though, these days. When I find that I am hesitating because I am afraid to screw it up, I remember what Husband said about that being better than nothing :).
A few words from Mike: It’s so easy to say something clever like that! Not so easy to live it. The anxiety that surrounds the fear of failure is the worse enemy of success. Being too afraid to start, only ensures the very failure that’s so scary. So many projects, plans, ideas end up dying before they can ever come to fruition just because someone was afraid to “mess it up.” In the world of technology, waiting all but ensures that someone else out there is going to have the same idea you had. I’ve started countless projects in my youth, that died with the change of the world. It’s hard to find motivation to finish a game for DOS. 🙂
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