I’m the first to admit that I have a decent touch of OCD and a desire to create perfection in most anything I touch. Whether photography, cooking, scale modeling, or my work, I’m not here to fuck around. I love producing results that are world class. I love playing in the big leagues, not the minors. When I was in college I had an internship with a medical product design company. On the wall of the owner’s office there was a framed Air Jordan shirt that said:

“Somewhere someone is practicing and when you meet them, they will beat you”

I struggled that summer to understand how that was a message worthy of framing. At the end of the summer as my internship was closing, I just asked him: What the hell is that doing on the wall. He told me simply that this was a reminder that there is always someone working harder with more talent, luck, and/or raw skill than you so the real question is what caliber of competitor do you want to be beaten by? Do you want to earn your place on the court with Jordan, even if you lose to him, or do you want to only progress as far as the local pickup league?

It was a motivation for me for years. Still is. But despite trying to embrace the inherent humility of this idea, I still found myself frustrated that there was such a vast crevasse between my creative goals and my creative output. It’s been hard to like just about any scale model, photo, or food dish I’ve created because I know clearly what it’s “supposed” to look like/taste like/make a viewer feel. So when I don’t get there… WTF?? Even on the latest episode of the Sprue Cutter’s Union podcast, Will talked about this same issue… he knows what he wants, what it’s supposed to look like, so why the all holy hell is he not getting that result?? I feel ya, Will. I feel ya.

I recently heard an amazing quote from Ira Glass that really explains it.

“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”

This couldn’t be more spot on. The real pisser is that I have to remember that despite having been a scale modeler for a bunch of years, I’m still a “beginner”. I don’t have a volume of work enough to have moved past that beginner space. I haven’t had the time I’d like to have, and often the creative motivation to get to the bench to create that volume of work.

So here’s to figuring out how to just. keep. building. Thanks, Ira.