The Gap.

Sometimes I think "Man, I am on a roll! Go me!"

I like to pat myself on the back a lot. Mostly because I know I need the encouragement to keep myself going.

I browse through so many blogs, posts, pictures, tutorials and products relating to paper crafting and sometimes I get depressed. I get jealous of other's fabulous talent. I think how great it would be to spend x amount of time a day to crafting. I envy all the products I can't afford and I wonder how anyone can afford all that stuff. Like the Cricut machine?? And all the cartridges that go with them? The Silhouette? How does everyone keep up on the latest trends when everything costs so dang much? $5 for 10 yards of twine?

Are you kidding me? 

I just browsed through a blog where this woman had a crafting room the size of my entire house and had it chock-full of supplies in an enormously ridiculous Scrap-n-Cube. When I got to the picture of her Quickuts dies, I had to stop. Drawers upon drawers are filled with the dies. And then I drool daily over the "organization porn" on the Crafty Storage blog. How anyone can afford all that product, let alone that fancy storage, is beyond me.

I'm cynical. Shocking. I'm known for wearing my heart on my sleeve. I'm also known for ranting and not writing fluidly. Try to stay with me as I change subjects.

I played the piano for ten years during my childhood and my mother made me practice every day for an hour. My mother said I was talented but that I needed to learn to work through my mistakes instead of starting the whole piece over every single time I made a mistake. I never grew out of or corrected that habit.

You know, I don't think anyone really expresses frustration on any of these crafting blogs. I never read an entry where someone goes

"dude, this project was a pain in my rear. I messed up five times on this flower embellishment *here* before it finally turned out right." 

I am constantly frustrated when it comes to this hobby. Specifically, I get frustrated when I have too many ideas that don't pan out or I don't have any ideas at all. I can't tell you how much I spend on the actual outcome of a project because I spend so many wasted hours on the failures that lead up to the finished product. I mean, hours are spent just trying techniques and ideas every day, and 99% of them just end up in the trash. Yes, I'm learning, but it would be nice to know I'm not alone in my frustration!

But then I think about things like Einstein ("you never fail until you stop trying"), Thomas Edison (he had over 10,000 prototypes before he invented the light bulb), and even Norm Larsen, the inventor of WD-40 (WD stands for Water Displacement-40th attempt. Thirty-nine failures before he got to the finished product).

I read motivational quotes, phrases and posters. Like this from Ira Glass.

Source

and I have hope.

Then I step into that craft room. And sometimes it's good. Sometimes it's a beautiful thing and I'm able to get a creative release. I sing along to my iPod and dance in circles. But other times I sit and stare. I stare for what seems like hours, just trying to come up with something that I like or that someone else would like, or that someone wouldn't look at and say to themselves "you call that art?"

So let me be the first to say that I'm frustrated. I'm frustrated that I'm not awesome like the hundreds that get published in magazines. I'm frustrated that I don't win challenges. I'm frustrated that I can't even please myself half the time.

I guess I just need to work through that gap. I need to create when I want to create and feel inspired, not make a card because I feel like I need to be awesome like so-and-so.

/end rant