Aug
20
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Day #5 of ‘Back to School’ week at The Napkin Dad Daily
I love doing home improvement project, but one of the down sides of doing them is that I am an amateur. I don’t have 20 years experience building fences or putting up guttering or cleaning carburators on lawn mowers (all things I have done this summer). I am learning as I go. I try to follow directions. but I can’t know all what I need to know to make the job absolutely perfect because I don’t have the education of the trade. I might know some secrets a guy a Lowe’s tells me, but they hardly ever are where I have my problems. I have my problems in the average details of doing the work.
The same is true in non-manual labor fields. Whether you are studying Neuroscience and have to write five papers or studying Apparel Design and have to make five garments, the knowledge of the trade comes from the doing everyday.
There is a well known quote, I think by the artist Phillip Pearlstein, that says ‘if you want to be an artist, first find a studio and paint 10 hours a day every day for 7 years, then decide if that is what you want to do.’ Exaggerated as that is, it has a kernal of truth to it. The knowing is in the doing.
Drawing and commentary by Marty Coleman of The Napkin Dad Daily
Quote attributed to both James Charlton and H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
Nov
17
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This has probably been the hardest thing for me to implement in my creative life. It is why artists who think they are ready to be seen and heard really aren’t. It is why restaurants fail, why musicians don’t make it, why companies don’t prosper. It’s also known as ‘spreading yourself too thin’ and it lead to stress (see yesterday’s napkin) and frustration.
But the hardest thing to realize is that disciplining yourself also leads to stress and frustration. You purposely have to pull back from things that interest you and you know you could succeed at. You purposely have to forgo some possibly lucrative avenues when you really might need the money. You have to watch others succeed in those directions you decided against. You have to have patience and believe in spite of the current situation.
But, even though discipline AND lack of it can lead to stress and frustration, only one continues on past that forest and into a clearing. The route of discipline moves on, it reaches its goal. So, while you may see the world around you and want to indulge in all of it, if you stay focused and know what you truly want to see happen in one particular direction (ok, maybe two) AND you are willing to do the work, then you will find success on your path.
Drawing and commentary by Marty Coleman of The Napkin Dad Daily blog
Quote by H. Jackson Brown, Jr., no record of date of birth – still alive, American author
Feb
22
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The difference between success and failure in many cases isn’t talent, it’s persistence. How has your persistence paid off?
