Customizing my equipment is one of the joys of being creative. After years of driving my Jeep with a dealership advertisement on the spare tire cover, I decided to spray over it and paint something unique. It now reads "Keep on Smilin'" just like my blog tagline. Hopefully, while sitting in traffic, the message could encourage the driver behind me. Or...make them want to rear-end me for my sickening optimism, hah.
Likewise, when a snowboard helmet came into the charity, I bought it even though it matched none of my snowboard gear.
Easy enough to fix!
Why keep it as a drab black helmet when I could fly down the mountain with a Hawaiian-inspired wolf on my forehead? All I had to do was sketch a design in pencil and whip out my acrylic paints.
Behold, a swirly wolf and other asymmetrical designs. Somehow, the paint color matched my new goggles perfectly. I was ecstatic.
Happy accident or not, I enjoy color matching my attire. Painting my helmet was an easy way to do it. Still, I am sometimes guilty of getting those jitters when staring at a blank page, canvas, helmet, tire cover, etc. What if I mess it up? What if it looks worse than before? What if I exhausted all my skills on my last project and my creative juices still need at least five more visits to the dog park to replenish?
Sigh...anxiety is a beast.
There's no quick fix to making that first stroke or typing that first word. I've found it helps to go back and remind myself of my accomplishments. Say, open a completed novel or browse through an art folder. I did that. They wouldn't exist without me.
The projects others enjoy the most, written or otherwise, are often the ones on which I felt I could have done better. Though I can't get by on what other people think, it helps to know my skills are appreciated. Nothing lifts me like making a friend smile with my creativity.
Not everything I create is worth sharing, and that's okay. The reminder that I can because I have before helps me push through. So what if I mess it up? I can fix it. So what if it's not my best? Maybe it wasn't meant to be. Off lifts the creative pressure.
The most helpful advice I can give myself and anyone else is simply this: keep on creating. Even if the final product isn't the greatest, it wouldn't exist at all without that first step. One of my favorite pieces of writing advice is just write. Mistakes are for the editing process. No one can edit something blank. And each "failure" is excellent practice.
Failures lead to success in one form or another. Learning a lesson, even a painful one, is still a success. I'll keep working to embrace my failures and setbacks until I can look back and be proud of where they took me.
Keep on smilin'!
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