Skip to content

Critical Mass: A challenge for 2013

  • by
Wine Glass (graphite)

 

About this time last year I suddenly found myself without a job & decided it was a perfect time to build a website – after all, I’d owned the domain name for at least 2 years. A year later it looks exactly as it did then: a few images, some self conscious information about myself and a hopeful contact page….. all pretty embarrassing & not surprising no-one visits.

Well, I find myself between jobs again & I’m revisiting my earlier efforts… I’ve decided a facelift is in order as well as a demonstration of dedication. Hence my first post of all time, and a challenge to myself:

The challenge: to create something every day and to share my journey in gory detail.

Inspiration for completing such a challenge came from various sources: articles that seem to appear every time I sit at my PC with stories of people who’ve documented their progress in a chosen quest & the effect it has had on their life & work.

Today the whole subject reached critical mass for me (hence the title). I watched Jonathon Fields interviewing Lisa Congdon about learning a new skill and sharing her progress on a daily basis. Ashe began to gather an audience she couldn’t shirk from her commitment to post &, inevitably, practising continuously made her improve so much faster.

They also discuss the issue of going public while learning, of not being perfect – now this, I think, is my personal mountain. Lisa’s response is that you have to put yourself out there in order to move forward: that if you wait for perfection you may wait forever.

So, the penny has finally dropped. At last I understand that if I can commit to practising regularly and sharing the results then my confidence, as well as my skills, will grow… and much more rapidly.

I think the first bit is going reasonably well, now for stage two!! I feel a like I’m at group therapy when I say:

“it has been 2 years since my last sketch. Here’s my first one this year, completed with the new graphite sticks I got for Christmas.”