Practice makes perfect

I'm not good at practicing, which is an underlying reason that I never took up music or sports. (Sports may have been because I'm also not that competitive. Not a great asset to have in a team player.) I tend to be a "If at first you don't succeed, give up for a few months and then try it again. Maybe." sort of person. Art also fell into the "practice" category, and I never took to sketching, the idea of working the same thing over and over until I ended up with something that I liked... It just made me cranky. I could see in my brain how I wanted something to look, and when I couldn't get it on paper immediately... I would stop.

This spring I decided I needed to practice practicing, if I ever wanted to start doing some sort of art again. I still got tangled up in this notion of "practice makes perfect." I pictured asking myself "Is it perfect now? How about now? Is it perfect this time?" and my stress level kicked in a couple of extra notches. But I hauled out all the sketchbooks I've stashed over the years and had at it.

Today I heard myself (well, it was over chat, so technically I read it), anyway, saw myself type this:

Yup. Maybe, just Maybe, I finally understand what this practicing thing is all about.