Practicing Ugly
Went to a few art meetups in recent weeks to work on my pieces in an accountable way. Since I'm learning a lot of new concepts for a piece, the progress on the work has been painstakingly slow. For the past few weeks, the work has changed very little on the surface.
Naturally, this got me pretty self-conscious. Maybe I come off as slow, perfectionist, lazy, or bad? Like most people, I have a natural tendency to want to show myself as being “good” at something, so I definitely feel some internal conflicts during these sessions.
Thinking about it, I don't think there's any way to avoid coming off as inefficient when practicing. 99% of time I'm in the process of learning something, it had looked pretty bad out outside perspectives. It goes not only for creative endeavors, but banal things like biking, driving, and cooking as well.
I think the right way to practice on most things will by default look bad, so the choice is really to either:
- Hang out and learn, but look bad (ignore looking good)
- Hang out and not learn, but look good (ignore learning)
- Don't hang out (ignore social motivation)
When put that way, the correct choice is pretty obvious – swallow my pride, and start practicing ugly.
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Addendum: many people criticize media for romanticizing the idea of a genius who gets it right on the first try. While I think media is partly to blame for this, I can't help but feel that we are intrinsically drawn to the idea of a genius. It is the platonic ideal of “talent”, and just like all platonic ideals, it's something we are easily endeared to.