Whimper (With too many brackets again)
Oct. 3rd, 2007 10:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lenora_roseMaybe I'll get the heap of reviews I've been meaning to put up done while I'm in Edmonton this weekend. Lord knows, I'm torn between wanting to whine that I'll have to take that much time off of a pottery project that's already running slow, and being grateful for the enforced rest. My right thumb has no qualms, of course, it's for a break all the way.
Tonight's a break anyhow, since I have an anthropology quiz tomorrow. Hardly difficult stuff, especially as it's multiple choice all the way, which is fabulous for those of us with excellent recognition memory but shaky recall (unless it rhymes and someone dies). But I do actually need to read the relevant segments of the textbook to recognize them.
Anyhow, this post is mostly to whine. Hear me whine.
I'm suffering a crisis of faith again.
See, I'm having a fabulous time with the class. I've been there after hours a few times, to work. I've taken things home to work on and made a thorough mess of our dining room table. It's wonderful, it was fabulous to start again, I'm loving the work...
... but this first project is so labour intensive (by my choice, but it's too far in to back out) it would be running late without a conference and a wedding in another city in the middle. I think I picked something involving more sheer hours of work than most. And I know I'm running late and my anxiety on that is hitting (Even though I also already have the second project effectively started, and can probably finish that much more on time). And the professor is pressuring me. Part is my own fault; in spite of all his other ramblings as to "why", the real reason I should not do part of my ceramics projects at home is because he then doesn't actually notice I'm actually, like, working. Never mind him cutting one full class (3 hours) last week because he likes to do in progress critiques, and the other being entirely devoted to set-up for the ceramics conference. never mind that during the ceramics conference there was no way to work at the university, although I was present.
Also, the ceramics conference and the classes are a solid knock to the ego, which may be necessary (Don't improve if you don't see a need... and in fact, that's the whole reason I'm here) but is never fun. I'm surrounded by people who do amazing things. Some of the works and the demos were eye-opening. The ideas are everywhere, inspiring...
Except that some of the ideas don't inspire. They grab you and try to push you away from the thing you're doing that's successful, and into other routes, to do things you wouldn't love, that would end up a grind and a misery. (Doing so to fit the professor's artistic bias would be as bad as doing a schlock book for cash.) It doesn't help that the professor does one of the main critique mistakes out there - trying to rewrite your idea into his own, make it a piece as he would do it - not only during crits, but when he's getting the bloody proposal.
And I'm not trying to guard my precious artistic vision, as such. I can still tell a piece of solid advice - some of the discussions we've had of tools, for just one example -- from trying to turn a Lenora Rose work into a Professor Grimmer project.
And the throwing is fine, but most of the other steps in the pottery work are actively malevolent towards my hand. In small doses, as I've worked over the last few years, no worse than anything else I do, and quickly countered by another bout of archery. In the sort of massive ongoing efforts I've been putting in the last few days? My thumb is alternating between sore and tingling. My thumb is not part of my usual RSI; the only time it's given me twinges was when I've been overusing the trackball that helps all the other RSI, and that's usually a hint to stop playing computer games and get back to writing. :)
It doesn't help that I hurt my shoulder somehow (I still don't know what I did) a short while before school and pottery started, and the strain is aggravating that, too.
I'm going to be doing more as time goes on on the second project, whether this one be done or not, because the initial stages of hand-building figurines are more like squeezing putty, and well, they feel good. Change it up, maybe it will help.
But the professor will talk sharply at me for lateness, and mark me down. I swear he already said things that seemed to hint he thought I was being lazy, even after my comment that I was working as fast as I could without permanent damage.
So now I'm being driven, not by him but by the stupid anxiety demons in my head, to work longer hours, until the point where I stopped last night only when I wasn't sure I had enough grip left to actually control the tools, or enough pain endurance to try. And I know I'll do the same tomorrow. And Friday.
And the little demon thoughts are also reminding me of the much more beautiful, much simpler work others produced at the conference art show, and that they're doing around me in the class (and of course, people in both places did work that totally did not impress me, but that's not the work that comes into my mind when I look at my own.) So why this much more effort to produce lesser things?
Because it's what I do. And how I do it. And when I don't have other anxieties, of health and of deadlines, I do like the results. Okay. And nobody else does it, does exactly this. Even yesterday, all but whimpering with the hurt, I looked at where that one piece was going, and the one new detail I managed, and I thought, "That little detail there. That one works."
It's just that while being stuck in a valley of doubt is bad, it actually doesn't help that you're surrounded by those peaks where you best like to run. Because then it's such a long way up, and they seem so very steep.
Tonight's a break anyhow, since I have an anthropology quiz tomorrow. Hardly difficult stuff, especially as it's multiple choice all the way, which is fabulous for those of us with excellent recognition memory but shaky recall (unless it rhymes and someone dies). But I do actually need to read the relevant segments of the textbook to recognize them.
Anyhow, this post is mostly to whine. Hear me whine.
I'm suffering a crisis of faith again.
See, I'm having a fabulous time with the class. I've been there after hours a few times, to work. I've taken things home to work on and made a thorough mess of our dining room table. It's wonderful, it was fabulous to start again, I'm loving the work...
... but this first project is so labour intensive (by my choice, but it's too far in to back out) it would be running late without a conference and a wedding in another city in the middle. I think I picked something involving more sheer hours of work than most. And I know I'm running late and my anxiety on that is hitting (Even though I also already have the second project effectively started, and can probably finish that much more on time). And the professor is pressuring me. Part is my own fault; in spite of all his other ramblings as to "why", the real reason I should not do part of my ceramics projects at home is because he then doesn't actually notice I'm actually, like, working. Never mind him cutting one full class (3 hours) last week because he likes to do in progress critiques, and the other being entirely devoted to set-up for the ceramics conference. never mind that during the ceramics conference there was no way to work at the university, although I was present.
Also, the ceramics conference and the classes are a solid knock to the ego, which may be necessary (Don't improve if you don't see a need... and in fact, that's the whole reason I'm here) but is never fun. I'm surrounded by people who do amazing things. Some of the works and the demos were eye-opening. The ideas are everywhere, inspiring...
Except that some of the ideas don't inspire. They grab you and try to push you away from the thing you're doing that's successful, and into other routes, to do things you wouldn't love, that would end up a grind and a misery. (Doing so to fit the professor's artistic bias would be as bad as doing a schlock book for cash.) It doesn't help that the professor does one of the main critique mistakes out there - trying to rewrite your idea into his own, make it a piece as he would do it - not only during crits, but when he's getting the bloody proposal.
And I'm not trying to guard my precious artistic vision, as such. I can still tell a piece of solid advice - some of the discussions we've had of tools, for just one example -- from trying to turn a Lenora Rose work into a Professor Grimmer project.
And the throwing is fine, but most of the other steps in the pottery work are actively malevolent towards my hand. In small doses, as I've worked over the last few years, no worse than anything else I do, and quickly countered by another bout of archery. In the sort of massive ongoing efforts I've been putting in the last few days? My thumb is alternating between sore and tingling. My thumb is not part of my usual RSI; the only time it's given me twinges was when I've been overusing the trackball that helps all the other RSI, and that's usually a hint to stop playing computer games and get back to writing. :)
It doesn't help that I hurt my shoulder somehow (I still don't know what I did) a short while before school and pottery started, and the strain is aggravating that, too.
I'm going to be doing more as time goes on on the second project, whether this one be done or not, because the initial stages of hand-building figurines are more like squeezing putty, and well, they feel good. Change it up, maybe it will help.
But the professor will talk sharply at me for lateness, and mark me down. I swear he already said things that seemed to hint he thought I was being lazy, even after my comment that I was working as fast as I could without permanent damage.
So now I'm being driven, not by him but by the stupid anxiety demons in my head, to work longer hours, until the point where I stopped last night only when I wasn't sure I had enough grip left to actually control the tools, or enough pain endurance to try. And I know I'll do the same tomorrow. And Friday.
And the little demon thoughts are also reminding me of the much more beautiful, much simpler work others produced at the conference art show, and that they're doing around me in the class (and of course, people in both places did work that totally did not impress me, but that's not the work that comes into my mind when I look at my own.) So why this much more effort to produce lesser things?
Because it's what I do. And how I do it. And when I don't have other anxieties, of health and of deadlines, I do like the results. Okay. And nobody else does it, does exactly this. Even yesterday, all but whimpering with the hurt, I looked at where that one piece was going, and the one new detail I managed, and I thought, "That little detail there. That one works."
It's just that while being stuck in a valley of doubt is bad, it actually doesn't help that you're surrounded by those peaks where you best like to run. Because then it's such a long way up, and they seem so very steep.
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no subject
Date: 2007-10-04 01:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-10-04 07:32 pm (UTC)For the physical issues, I've been remembering to do warm-up exercises more, and using the race when doing tasks where I can use a brace.
The grades, alas, are out of my control. :)