Tag: failure

Failure week

Hi Everyone!

I hope you are well and safe from the storms that seem to be hitting everybody this winter. Snow, rain, tornados. We had all sorts of crazy thunderstorms yesterday evening. I don’t think we had any storms all summer that matched the ones we had yesterday. Weird stuff.

This has been a tough week. Why is it that you can go along just fine for a fairly extended amount of time and then, “BAM”, everything seems to go sideways all at once? In the spirit of truth, let’s just discuss failure. You know, the stuff that doesn’t make it onto social media. All the beautiful photos, but behind the camera is huge pile of dirty laundry, kid toys and cat puke.

Last week I worked and worked on two paintings. Hours of my life put into them. By Friday I was realizing one is probably a complete failure and one is definitely not working the way I wanted it to. Generally I do not do artwork on the weekend and I hoped that by Monday I could figure out a way to save them. Nope. No such luck. By Monday afternoon I also realized that a life situation wasn’t looking too good either. Monday was super Mondayish. It was one of those days that would have been better spent in the bed with the covers over my head.

The featured artwork above has been my mood all week. Tuesday I hurried through my morning chores to get in the studio and pour out the angst in the drawing. I do not consider myself an abstract artist at all, but there is some serious therapy in just drawing or painting emotions. I believe it’s Betty Edwards’ “Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain” that goes into how much humans can understand just from an expressive drawn line. I imagine that musicians and dancers can work out their demons in a similar manner.

So here are the paintings or parts of them that may disappear soon. The horse’s head is workable, but the back end of the horse that I’m not showing you (I just can’t bring myself to look at it here) is a hot mess. Horses are my nemesis (“the inescapable agent of someone’s or something’s downfall” – perfect definition!) even though I have four live models outside my window. I probably have 4 or 5 more horse paintings planned. Talk about self abuse!

Now the sheep are in the gray area. This is the second time I have done a painting of these sheep. The first one went in the trash. This one is better, but still not matching the vision in my head. By the way, this one was titled “The Gossips,” years ago when I took the reference photos. My skill with oil paint just isn’t there yet. It may just turn into a drawing so that I can move on.

“The Gossips” copyright 2023 Christel Huttar

So, what do I do about failures? I would love to hear what you do to get through them. There is no sugar coating them. They feel awful and maybe we can help each other through it.

Yesterday I started a great big (well, big for me and the available space) new painting that will either work out or I will fail at it in flying colors AND I started a new drawing. Drawing is my happy place and my safe place. I know how to work a pencil and charcoal. I also don’t agonize over trashing a drawing because the supplies don’t cost so dang much. So basically I am forcing myself back on the horse in a manner, but with a slightly safer subject to build skills and confidence in my painting. The drawing is to sooth my tortured soul. I can go into that wonderful place called FLOW and lose all track of time. My brain is on auto pilot and not beating myself up for failing.

As far as the life situation goes, the drawing process is a salve until I know what to do. Part of it is in my control, but a good bit of it is totally out of my control. It will not be easily fixed and it is not something I feel I can walk away from as tempting as it is right now. I guess the human reaction is to run from hurt, but the spirit needs to find the strength to walk through the muck to the other side. If you are dealing with failures, just know you aren’t alone. We all project the pretty pictures to the world, but we need to clean up the cat puke.

Hang in there and have a good week!

Christel

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Curiosity

Dorothy parker quote

I saw this quote on my cousin’s Facebook feed this morning and thought about how true this is.  Curiosity is a blessing and a curse all wrapped up together with the fact that as far as we know, we only get one lifetime.  Personally, I do not have enough time to go down every rabbit hole my curiosity wants to take, but by golly I’m going to try!

A friend asked me recently how I do everything I do.  The answer is “I do lots of things, but not necessarily lots of things well”. That is also a blessing and a curse.

I would love to excel in a couple of areas, but to really do that I would have to give up soooo many other things that I want to do, try, learn, places to visit and explore.  BUT I will admit, quite happily, that I NEVER GET BORED!  Boredom is a waste of your precious life.  Whether it is one passion or a thousand, curiosity is what makes you dig deeper, study more, practice more, give more, smile more and get out of bed with leap instead of a moan.

Another conversation recently was about a wealthy family a loved one spent some time with.  He said, “they have so much money and all they can find to do is sit around and drink every evening, all evening.”  That, my friends, is a waste of a life.  Good heavens, spend some of that money and go travel or see if you can make someone else’s life better with it.  Don’t drink it!

How do you break out of the boredom routine? Let me see if I can give some suggestions if you need help.

  1.  Pick one little subject that you have a speck of interest in and start doing some research.  Not boring classroom research, but real life research. Example:  I started out growing herbs to cook with.  During my Pinterest time I would pin articles about growing herbs and read about them.  Those articles often described the healing properties of herbs and plants.  To make a long story short, I now have started making my own herbal remedies to use and discovering that most of what we call weeds are beneficial plants. This summer I have wandered around learning plant names and properties that I have looked at all my life and knew nothing about.
  2. Take something that you perceive as a need and find a solution.  Example (sorry, I’m using me for all these, but I can’t speak for how other folks find their rabbit holes) – I needed honey. I had always gotten my raw honey from my Dad, but when my sister and brother-in-law started expanding his honey business the honey was often sold out before I could restock my supply.  I realized that now that I live out in the country again I could have bees and have my own honey supply.  Sounds easy enough until you have to research how to keep 60,000 bees alive.  Guess what! Bees are fascinating little creatures. I am now officially a bee fanatic.
  3.  Take a new road. Example – see my post about finding my way around my new part of the world.  I am seriously racking up new ideas for drawings and painting by just turning down a road that I haven’t been down before.  The views here are amazing.  In more populated areas (we don’t have a grocery store here if that explains anything) you could run across a music store where you could learn to play an instrument, a plant nursery where you could get herb plants, a school that would love to have volunteers to help students read.  It is endless.
  4.  This may be the most important one. Do not be afraid to fail at something!  I repeat – DO NOT BE AFRAID TO FAIL!  With the possible exception of certain extreme risk taking passions, most endeavors are not life threating and not un-repairable. Yes, one more Example from the home front – Floor tiling.  We decided to tile our floors ourselves.  Since I am the detail person that primarily means ME.  No, I had never stuck the first tile to a floor EVER when I started. That is what YouTube is for.  I am 85% finished with the floor and am pretty darn pleased with the way it has turned out. A professional tile guy could find my mistakes, but I bet you couldn’t.  Even if I had messed the floor up, we had saved enough money by doing it ourselves that we could have hired the tile guy to come fix my mess. DO NOT BE AFRAID TO FAIL!

My cousin, who posted the above quote, and my sister are both smitten with the curiosity curse as well.  Enter ballroom dancing, photography, welding, raising llamas…maybe it’s a genetic curse.

Curse or blessing, Curiosity just makes life FUN.  If you want a break from the depressing news and elections go find a rabbit hole to fall into.  Your TV will get dusty, Facebook friends will send out a search party and your budget may or may not (curiosity does not have to be expensive) take a beating, but life will get very interesting and colorful and exciting.

Why are you still here?  Go!

 

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Learning to ride and other failures

There are times when I think my life would make a good sitcom.  Have you noticed that what makes us watch TV sitcoms are the things that go wrong in spite of a character’s best attempt at something? Yeah, I have had a few of those moments recently.

If you read my “drilling down” post you know that I am trying to improve my skills in several areas.  So for an update and your amusement, here is how it is going.

Sewing: I thought I was on a roll and got cocky.  My recent attempt at making some stuffed monsters has met with some issues. Minky fabric is NOT my friend and the combination of knit fabric and fabric glue with a sewing machine will make you say bad words.  Check out these eyeballs.  Sad. Just sad.

Monster eyes 2

Painting: I’m not even going to show you my attempts at this yet.  There was a time (about 30 years ago to be exact) when I was fairly proficient with acrylic paint. Colors blended together effortlessly. Light landed where it was supposed to go. Currently I have two paintings that are about to be, to put it kindly, wiped off the face of the earth and recreated again.

Knitting: I’m halfway into ONE sock.  How am I ever going to work up to a sweater if it takes me a month to do half a sock?!

Horseback riding: The upside to the fact that DH never actually carries his phone is that there is no video of the following event.

Bob

We have had some beautiful Fall weather in my part of NC and I was itching to practice my horseback riding skills.  Our resident pasture ornaments include Christy (eldest, most experienced with all skill level riders and most ill natured), KC (former endurance competition horse, laid back personality), and Bob (the teenager, untrained, mischievous, escape artist).

Since Bob isn’t trained yet he was exempt from this excursion and continued to make the pasture look good with his pretty boy self.  DH decided that since KC was “bomb proof” from all his years as an endurance horse that I would be safest on him.  Christy has expressed some “attitude” at times so DH rode her.

The trip started out well enough.  Up the dirt road to the main road.  No one seemed to be having any problems with the cars going by.  Let me stop here and explain that the horses have not been ridden regularly for several years.  They were out of practice as much as I am. As we were cutting through the neighbor’s field I noticed that KC was more interested in eating than hauling my butt around.  It took some effort on my part to keep him moving.

As we continued on KC seemed to be remembering that he enjoyed getting out and picked up his step…to the point that it took some effort on my part to slow him down.  Are you noticing a pattern here?  I have only had the most rudimentary of riding lessons.  Rein right to go right, left to go left, back to stop. That’s it.  On average I ride once every ten years.  No one has ever explained leg pressure or body weight shifts have meaning to a horse. My horseback riding skill is STAYING ON THE HORSE. Period.

KC and DH competed for years in endurance races of 50 to 100 miles.  DH doesn’t even have to use reins for KC to know what he is supposed to do.  And then I come along.  As we rode through the field we passed a small pond surrounded by beautiful Fall color adorned trees and approached a small hill. DH stopped and explained that we were going to work on my riding skill a little by going up the hill and that KC would go uphill a LITTLE faster than a walk so be prepared.  Right. Got it.

After that, it’s all a blur.  I remember shifting in the saddle at the bottom of the hill to brace myself and suddenly KC took off at a full gallop with me hanging on for dear life, screaming as we flew through high grass and trees and headed for the woods.  As we reached the top of the hill I was able to level out enough to pull back on the reins and scream a series of WHOA, WHOA WHOOOOOAAAA’s before we went into the woods and I got taken out by a tree branch (ask me how I know about that)! Finally he stopped.

Without going into all the remaining details I will tell you this much.  I rode Christy back and she tested me in oncoming traffic. Yes, cars, coming by at a high rate of speed.  KC maybe wasn’t trying to abuse me as much as he just hadn’t gotten to stretch his legs in a while and was enjoying some fun.  DH had to do some work to keep KC from letting loose with him, though by unknowingly shifting my weight and loosening the reins, I probably told KC to fly up that hill.

We all made it safely home and my one skill of STAYING ON THE HORSE is still intact! It has been decided that I will be in the riding ring on Christy learning the other skills of horseback riding until I am safe to leave the pasture.  I think there will be a riding helmet involved also, just in case my one current skill leaves me.

I hope my stories of utter failure help you along in any endeavor you may be attempting. Learning and improving is not for the faint of heart!

 

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