Never Ending

The photo is of a runner I wove a couple of years ago.  People had been asking me for longer table runners and I had a whole bunch of cotton slub that needed using up so I designed a line of wider/longer table runners.

another colour combination

Seemed that while people wanted longer runners, these weren't it.

I think I did 6 or 7 different colour combos

Another disappointment in a lifetime of them.

But the thing is...you can't let the 'failures' stop you.  You can't give in, give up.

Well, you can, but...

This year has kind of put the icing on the cake of disappointment.  So many plans, so many people had, all for naught.

The fake cake thing happening on Twitter right now?  Just kind of sums up 2020.

In the category of 'just because you can doesn't mean you should', making cakes that look rather realistically like something else entirely is kind of, well, symptomatic of life right now.

The cakes are - quite frankly - amazing, a tour de force of the baker/decorator's skills in making something out of cake and/or fondant that at first (or even second in some cases) look like something else entirely.

I admire the skill and artistry of the people making the things.

I also recognize the number of 'failures' these people dealt with on the way to that level of skill.

And also?  Just because you can, doesn't always mean you should.

So, disappointments.  Yes, I have had a few.  More than a few, truth be told.  I have had out right failures in terms of concept.  I have failed to deliver designs that people were willing to purchase.  I have had to put plans on hold while things sorted themselves out.

When I started the Guild of Canadian Weavers tests, I assumed that it wouldn't take very long to complete the four levels.  Recently I was looking through my boxes and realize that it was a journey of about 12 years.  With plenty of failure and disappointment along the way.

Even so the work I sent in wasn't 'perfect'.  A clear eye told me where my weak points were.  Sure enough the markers saw them, too.  Of course they did.  But I managed to pass.  In the process I learned a ton of stuff.  And I finished.

Articles I wrote were rejected.  Classes I proposed to events were not what the event wanted.  Went to craft fairs and watched people dismiss my work with comments like "Huh, I can buy those cheaper at Kresges".

I have had poor student reviews - usually about something over which I had zero control, sometimes about expectations of the students that were not appropriate.

But.  But.  There have also been successes.  If I had given up at the string of disappointments in the early days, I wouldn't have made it to the successes.  I wouldn't have made it to the cake that looks like a croc shoe, or a glass of water with flowers.  I wouldn't have had the experiences I have had, been to the places I have travelled to, met the people who have enriched my life.

So yes, today another disappointment - the Olds classes scheduled for Cape Breton have been postponed until spring.

Will I teach them?  I don't know.  I hope so because I was contracted to teach this spring, postponed to September, now to...2021.

I know students are sorely disappointed.

Interestingly I had a dream just before waking where I was consoling someone who was experiencing a very stressful time.  I held her and assured her that her feelings were valid, and that she could have all the feelings that she felt, but that ultimately she had to figure out a way forward.

Maybe that lesson is the sum of my life, I don't know.  We are allowed to feel what we are feeling.  But then we have to step out of those feelings and move - hopefully forward.

Personally 2020 is beginning to feel never ending.  But it will end.  Where we will be in three months, six months, 12 months?  No one really knows.

We need to keep working towards our goals, even when we don't know if we will succeed this time.  Even if it seems pointless.  Even if we know we will fail, sometimes repeatedly.  We need to hope.  We need to move from where ever we are to somewhere else.  Like Winston Churchill says - if you are going through hell...keep going...