Long time no motivational art blogging! Actually, this time I'm going off on a bit of a tangent, but it's all applicable to anything and everything that you might be working on a lot at any given time, plus it's a quick read so ho hum. ;)
Today hasn’t been great, I’ve been a bit
off-colour in the art department (’scuse the pun) and things have been feeling
a bit iffy with my webite, shop and general social media stuff, like I know
there’s more I could do, and that I could do it all better, but something is
holding me back. The thing is I’ve had this sort of crises with my work
so often that I know it always inevitably precedes a kind of leap of progress, so I’m not
getting too worked up about it (it also helps that one of my favourite
video bloggers, Lachri Fine Art, mentioned having a similar sort of revelation with
her work: a slump generally proceeds a big improvement). That’s not what
inspired this blog post though, funnily enough – but it does involve the exact same thought/panic/revelation process as art!
See, it’s actually dog sports I wanted to
talk about. My dog is fantastic, as I’ve mentioned many times before, she’s all
you could wish for in a sports companion: endless motivation, enthusiasm, very fast and agile, is willing
to work for toys and treats alike… So colour me surprised
when every now and again (not frequently, thank goodness!) we have a really
terrible training session.
Tonight it was frisbee. Freija girl LOVES
those disks to bits, and usually I have no trouble getting her to at least
attempt a catch (we’re not great at flying catches yet, not least because I am
completely useless at throwing what is essentially a rubber pancake in such a
way that it’ll fly smoothly). That was not the case this time, she wouldn’t go
for the disks till they simply dropped in front of her to pick up. We wrapped
up the training session fairly quickly when I realised things weren’t going to
work, and left the little football pitch we practice on in a decidedly
frustrated mood.
As a dog owner it can be difficult to hide
that frustration, especially if it’s aimed at yourself (“why can’t I get this
throw right?” “why am I not giving commands clearly enough?” etc.). What I try to do is take a deep breath, pause the training for a few minutes
and figure out what’s going wrong while giving girly girl a chance to sniff around for a moment. If it seems like she’s too excited to
focus on catching practice, I’ll let her chase a couple of rollers (where you
throw the disk on it’s edge so it rolls instead of flying) and end the training
there. If it seems like she’s getting irritated at not getting the catch right
and receiving no praise, I’ll have her do a trick she knows and end the session
on a happy note. And if it’s simply me being rubbish at throwing, I’ll go and
practice that throw without Freija so I can get it right for her next time.
When we practice anything, whether
it’s painting, crochet or even doggy tricks, there will be moments when it feels like we’re
up against a brick wall. The first time (who am I kidding, the first ten times)
this happens, we’ll get annoyed or even angry at ourselves for not being able
to overcome the obstacle. That is not going to solve the problem – you have to make
yourself take a step back, take a deep breath, and work out what’s going wrong.
This can take a minute, a day, or several weeks, but you’ve got to let yourself get over
that frustration and really focus on what you can fix in order to get better,
and once you do you’ll soon forget that you had to go through that process in
order to progress. That’s why I’ve written this post, as a little reminder that
you’re capable of improving in whatever you’re working towards, as long as you
give yourself a fair chance. :)
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