I swear I am also writing every day

But I am also making more stuff. I can now make earrings, and have added another cuneiform logogram to my list of useless skills.

Photography is definitely not a useless skill, especially if one has an Etsy store--the photography is evolving. The drawback is, it takes a lot of thought, whereas the necklaces and earrings, once I've decided what I'm going to do the actual construction engages my mind just enough to let me chew on writing problems.

And slowly but surely, my wirework is improving. Which is very gratifying. I took a class at the local bead store, last weekend, on making your own findings. I can haz clasps and earwires! And one of the other students was dismayed at how her things were coming out. The instructor said, "It's just practice," and a bit later I said something like, every ugly, wonky earwire counts towards our ten thousand hours so they're a good thing, we should embrace them! And she had never heard the ten thousand hour thing and seemed very dismayed by the idea and cared nothing about the thought that all her failures could be seen as positive steps on the way to mastery. I felt bad for dismaying her, but also thought it kind of odd she'd focused where she did.*

I guess that sort of thing is fairly community-specific. Since writing is so personal, sometimes not producing the sort of work you can see in your mind's eye, not being able to write as well as you want to write can be upsetting, and that ten thousand hours thing can be a really necessary permission to suck for a while.

But really, permission to suck for a while is good for more than writing, I think. Being able to give yourself that, that's really important for learning new skills without beating yourself up.

__

*And then she expressed her exasperation with herself by saying she "felt like the nerd in the class" which confused me at first, but in her next sentences it became clear she was using the term to mean the reject, failure of the class. Way, way different social sphere, obviously.

I swear I am also writing every day

But I am also making more stuff. I can now make earrings, and have added another cuneiform logogram to my list of useless skills.

Photography is definitely not a useless skill, especially if one has an Etsy store--the photography is evolving. The drawback is, it takes a lot of thought, whereas the necklaces and earrings, once I've decided what I'm going to do the actual construction engages my mind just enough to let me chew on writing problems.

And slowly but surely, my wirework is improving. Which is very gratifying. I took a class at the local bead store, last weekend, on making your own findings. I can haz clasps and earwires! And one of the other students was dismayed at how her things were coming out. The instructor said, "It's just practice," and a bit later I said something like, every ugly, wonky earwire counts towards our ten thousand hours so they're a good thing, we should embrace them! And she had never heard the ten thousand hour thing and seemed very dismayed by the idea and cared nothing about the thought that all her failures could be seen as positive steps on the way to mastery. I felt bad for dismaying her, but also thought it kind of odd she'd focused where she did.*

I guess that sort of thing is fairly community-specific. Since writing is so personal, sometimes not producing the sort of work you can see in your mind's eye, not being able to write as well as you want to write can be upsetting, and that ten thousand hours thing can be a really necessary permission to suck for a while.

But really, permission to suck for a while is good for more than writing, I think. Being able to give yourself that, that's really important for learning new skills without beating yourself up.

__

*And then she expressed her exasperation with herself by saying she "felt like the nerd in the class" which confused me at first, but in her next sentences it became clear she was using the term to mean the reject, failure of the class. Way, way different social sphere, obviously.