Creativity & Failure. Our feels.

An essential aspect of creativity is not being afraid to fail

- Edwin Land

 

This quote resonates with me beyond belief. My entire creative life journey has been one of learning to love my mistakes. Learning to love the journey of learning itself and leaning into my failures. And I am still learning. It's probably one of the hardest things I have had to learn. The idea of perfection is so absolute and as humans we are taught that to be perfect is to be loved. Unlearning the desire for perfection and the comfort for the imperfect through failure is hard.

I had an art teacher growing up Ms. Harvey, she said what if it's not a mistake, only a happy accident? It's stuck with me forever, because it's an incredible way of looking at oops moments. Moments that hurt this idea of perfection. Moments that can completely stop you in your tracks and make you think creating isn't for you. That you're not actually creative and you'd be better off spending your time doing something else. These moments could even lead to you to telling your desire to create to be quiet, until it stops asking. But it's these accidents that set us apart from other creators. It's how we learn our own style, what we like and don't like.⁠ Making mistakes is how we grow and find our truest self. Making mistakes is authentic. Perfection is just an ideal.

Handsy is about taking away the stigma of "perfection" because perfection is in the eyes of the beholder. Learning to let go is what I encourage in our workshops. Play. Start over. Try over and over again. Because every time you try, you become more confident in your you-ness. Every accidental smoosh, could be the thing that you fall in love with. It could be the thing that makes your creation imperfectly perfect, just like you.

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