Frustrations in My Creative Work #AtoZChallenge

Hi everyone and welcome to my letter F post in the #AtoZChallenge. I didn’t change my mind, so today I’m writing about the things that frustrate me about being a creative.

The first thing that frustrates me, is the learning curve. This may contradict what I wrote yesterday about enjoying learning about other people’s creative processes. However, what I mean is the fact that it takes a lot of practice before I become even remotely proficient at a skill. This has been especially true for my crafty endeavors and less so in the area of my writing. I am both a bit of a perfectionist and quite impatient, like I said in my letter A post. This means that, if I had it my way, I’d be able to create perfect polymer clay sculptures right away rather than now, after nine months of practice, still barely having moved beyond the absolute beginner stage.

The second thing that frustrates me, is the comparison trap. This is related to the first and may once again contradict the point I made yesterday about loving to share my work. Indeed, I love to share my work, but knowing how others have moved far further along in their journey towards perfection within a certain timeframe than I have, can be quite frustrating.

Similarly, negative feedback can be quite frustrating to me. I am not that thick-skinned, to be honest and get easily discouraged.

Lastly, it is particularly frustrating especially with my polymer clay when I’ve worked on a project for a while and then once it comes out of the oven, it isn’t as I’d expected. Whether that is due to some mistake I made or some problem while baking – which I consider largely out of my control even though I really know it isn’t -, doesn’t really matter to me.