Maybe the thing that attracts people to creative endeavor is precisely the freedom to make mistakes. You can learn lot of things without understanding them. The only way to understand is to create (do something). In doing you will make mistakes and the beauty of a creative endeavor is that mistakes are acknowledged, respected, even cherished. If you’re not making mistakes, you’re not doing it right. In the more so-called practical fields people’s feet are often held to the fire over mistakes that won’t change much of anything except to illicit an extra phone call. Overzealous reprobation stifles creativity. It leads to functional idiocy.
“You’ve never seen a book that says Failing 101,” a friend says to me. “But every time I research an interesting project, they said that of the best things about their work is failure, and how they came to where they are, is because of previous failure.”
I am learning about photography, writing, and html/css coding on my own while I work. In the process of trying to makes something worthwhile, I have made many mistakes. In the course of writing this blog for a little over a year now, I have made many mistakes. But every mistake led me to my next lesson.
When I got lucky, the mistake was a new wonderful discovery.
You always have two options: make mistakes or stay where you are. I always think about this when I’m watching tennis. The thing that makes a swift player is not his years on the field but his recovery time.
Recovery time from his last mistake. A player who makes a mistake and laments it is done. The same goes for a singer, dancer or filmmaker.
This photograph is one of the first pictures I ever took in June 2006 as a would-be photography enthusiast. I was trying to measure the light correctly and in the process I forgot to focus. But, what a lovely swirl of color it came out to be. It is, to this day, one of my favorite photographs in my stack.
Friends, I’ll make more mistakes in this space as I grow. This blog will grow as I grow.
Thank you for walking with me.
