As I am embracing my new career as crochet artist and fiction author, I keep bumping into an uncomfortable truth. When you create, you must also destroy.
I almost gave up crochet art on Sunday. I am working on a particularly difficult project. I am very close to the end. I spent about two hours working on the project on Saturday, and then another hour on Sunday. Then I found a mistake. A big mistake. I had to undo three hours of work. It made me say bad words. (Well, I said bad words. I'm blaming the mistake.) I wanted to quit the project, and stop crocheting.
But, I persevered. And I finished the main part of the project last night. And so today, I will work the final piece. I plan to be finished by Friday. And I will love this piece more than any other, because it challenged me so much.
And that got me to thinking about the difference between my first career and this career.
In my first career, there was a lot of interaction with people. I didn't know if the coaching I did, or the teaching I did, or the corrections I made or the directions I gave ever made a difference, but I believed they did.
When I created new learning resources, or wrote new SQL queries for reports, or submitted progress reports to my superiors, there was always relatively immediate feedback. Not all of it was good, not all of it was actionable, but it was all necessary to progress.
Now, the feedback necessary for progress has to come from me.
When I found the error on Sunday, I thought for about five minutes if it would be noticeable in the finished garment. Because I really, really didn't want to undo all that work. But in the end, it didn't matter if it would be noticeable. It mattered that I knew it was there. And I want this garment to be the very best work I can do. Because that is how you put love in the world. You give people your very best. Even if it means you undo and redo over and over to get it right.
I have spent hours writing pages of prose, only to come back the next day and wipe it all out. Because I don't like how it sounds. Or I don't like where it is leading the character, or the story. And then it feels like I wasted the time it took to write it in the first place. But I want to make that printed word my very best.
So, to create, you must destroy. You must lose the vanity that all your time will produce something of value. Because while you are practicing an art or a craft, you must make mistakes. You must accept them and correct them.
Throughout my life, I have tried to keep learning and keep growing. Learning and growing mean that you practice a lot as you try to master new skills.
In my old world, that practice was called work. In my new world, I need to learn to call my practice work. And I need to learn how to feel good about undoing my work. And doing it over again. And honing my craft.
And isn't that just life in a nutshell? We just keep plugging along, trying to get things as right as we can get them. And sometimes we have to start over. And sometimes it feels like we keep working our butts off and getting nowhere. And sometimes the very repetitious nature of what we're doing makes us want to scream.
But sometimes there are moments of pure accomplishment. Of joy in a day well lived, a job well done, a creation to be proud of.
But the real thing to be proud of is that you keep on trying. That you keep giving your very best. That you keep putting love in the world. That you undo when necessary to make it better.
Because the process of creation is painful. Whether it is a tangible creation like a garment or a novel, or an intangible creation like a relationship.
And it is in the trying to get it as right as we can get it that life is found.
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