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.