Practice makes waste... or, How I Wish I Could Learn to Stop Worrying and Love the Bombs

Sink with Colored Sprinkles
Installation Piece
Ashley Gunn
Colorado Springs, CO






Hopefully it is clear that the above is tongue in cheek, and I do not, by any means, think this is a beautiful work of art =)

Today, I was to make cupcakes. Beautiful red velvet cupcakes with white icing and cute little pink polka dots. They would be iced using the icing attachments on my cookie press. They would be lovely and delicious. But, I haven't made cupcakes in awhile... I overfilled the cups, so the cakes came out funnily shaped.  Then I made the icing, and remembered that if you just use regular ol' vanilla extract, you're not gonna get white icing. So I dyed it pink. I loaded up the cookie press with about a third of the icing... and quickly realized that was only going to ice about three cupcakes, with the way I was doing things. The way I was doing things was not nearly as pretty as I imagined, either.

So, my lopsided cupcakes got iced with a knife and I threw some red sugar on top. They look like something a grade schooler would bake.

Experiences like this always bring me down. You always hear that practice makes perfect, but somehow, in my mind, it makes waste, and that bugs me. I thought to myself after trying to use the cookie press/icing gun that I probably needed to make up a batch of simple icing and just sit down and play with the thing... but then my mind kicked in - that would be wasting all that nice icing. I'm like this with everything. That would be wasting paper, or paints, or canvas, or fabric, or beads, or yarn. If it;s not wasting materials, it would be wasting time.

WHY do I think like this! WHYYYYYY!!!!!!? I expect myself to be able to pick something up and be perfect at it. I know it's not logical, but it is apparently the way my mind works.

Everything I create seems so very mediocre. There is always someone out there doing it better - whether it's baking or crocheting or sewing or photography or blogging. I feel like, no matter how hard I try, there always will be someone who does it better, so what is the point?

I wish I could just learn to let go, play with my art supplies, bake monstrosities, put up a fugly blog and not care... but I don't think I'm ever going to develop that skill!

*Sigh* Well... at least the cupcakes are tasty.