What do we learn?

It's been a good long break since the last post, during which there were medical appointments and Chinese New Year preparations, so I've been busy, sorry! Now that everything is done and work is settling down, I finally found some time to do a simple book cover with a greeting card.

The process of doing this is easy enough because all you really have to do is wrap the greeting card with a cover paper of your choice, so while I was making it, I had time to do some musings over the whole idea of crafting.

This particular occasion, I remembered a line I heard a parent say to a child over the taking up of music in school:

"You don't pursue music all the way unless you want to become a musician. If you don't, then there's no point in pursuing it in school to this extent."

That made me a little sad. We don't pursue a craft just to earn money from it, surely. Yes, it would be great if we did and we could live off what we loved. But, even if we don't get to, even if we have to keep our 9-5 jobs, does that necessarily mean there is no use for the craft that we love to do? 

(Here when I write craft, I refer to a interest that we work at for a sustained period of time in order to gain mastery of it. This could include art, craft, playing an instrument, photography, writing etc...)

What then, do we take away from our craft? Do we do it so that one day we could quit our 9-5 jobs? Do we do it just for the end product, to have something pretty to hold in our hands? To have something useful that will serve a meaningful purpose in our lives? 

Then what do we gain when we don't achieve what we set out to do? When we fail at it? When we don't make money or a living out of it? Does that mean our craft becomes useless or hopeless?

Think of your craft then not in terms of the material products it produces. Think in terms of the values and skills you learn and then it becomes clearer.

Real life example: When I volunteered for the violin recital, many people thought I was nuts. Even on the day of the recital, after all the practice I did, I still played nearly half the song off key. It would seem like a total bomb, but I still took away several lessons from my recital attempt:

Persistence - To keep trying even when our first attempts bomb. I thought I knew what persistence meant till I volunteered for this and to my horror realized at the start how far out of my depth I was. I had to keep practising and practising to reach a semi-acceptable level and then I realized what real persistence meant. 

Mindfulness - To reflect on our mistakes, think of what went wrong and what to do about it in the future. Mindless practising would have seen me playing the song wrongly a hundred times a day. I have to learn deliberate practice, in which after each attempt, I thought about the parts that went wrong and concentrated on making those parts right before going on to the rest of the song. Each time I practised, I had to keep a mindful eye (or ear) out for those parts to make sure I got them right.

Ability to withstand failure - To stand with grace under pressure even amidst total failure. When I finished the recital piece, I knew it wasn't good. But more importantly, I learnt that it was ok that it wasn't good. Life still went on, my family and friends were still around me and I could still continue playing the violin (badly). Whether the rest of the audience thought it was good or not didn't matter because they were so temporary in my life, which would go on even long after they had forgotten my performance.

When I looked at my violin playing this way, then it didn't really matter how well or how badly I played. I still learnt and continued to learn these lessons, which would follow me in other areas of life. And when I looked at the rest of the crafts that I pursued, I could see other values that I had learnt:

Meticulousness - To be exact and deliberate in your activities. My first few crafting and painting attempts were very haphazardly done and it showed. Paper stuck out at the wrong angles, paint jobs were done poorly and I felt it was because I tended to rush through my actions without thought for measurement or precision. Now this works well in some instances, but since I wanted a finished job that looked close to professional, I had to learn to be more meticulous and precise in what I did. Now when I make a new journal, I have learnt to be more exact in the way I cut and paste the paper and I'm a lot more proud of the products I produce. 

Patience and self-forgiveness - Things will still go wrong, no matter how hard or often you try. Songs will still be played wrongly, paint will be applied wrongly, paper will be cut or pasted wrongly. At times like this, when I want to throw everything into the rubbish chute in despair, I learn to tell myself to cool down and more importantly, forgive myself for my mistakes. It's ok to make these kind of mistakes and there's always a way to bounce back from them if we are willing to learn. That's important because I also learnt to apply this when I mess up in other areas, like work and tell myself it's ok in the long run, I will bounce back. 

So maybe in a way, this is a practice for when my own child faces the same reactions when he wants to pursue his own craft. There will be people who will tell him there's no use or money in it and that he's better off pursuing his career or his job. When they do, I hope I will remember this blog entry so that someone will tell him, "No, there is purpose, life and love in doing what we love and this is how I learnt it."

Reflections on December and 2016

It being the second last day of 2016, it's now or never that I finally get to writing my reflections, I guess. Like any other year, there has been ups and downs and sometimes, things start to look better in retrospect.

Family Life

After a couple of years of trying, I'm finally going to have a baby! I was pretty down in the first half of the year when the first try didn't work out but later on, it did and now I'm expecting to pop in March! I would admit that I have had slightly mixed feelings, loss of personal freedoms vs family life after hearing from so many people about how "it changes your whole life". 

But then I realized a couple of things from some mothers I follow on social media:

1. There are a lot of mothers who have continued doing what they love while having children. I follow a couple of bloggers and Instagrammers who do great writing and art and I used to think they could only do all these because they were childless. I was slightly surprised when I read that some of them had kids, 2 or more in some cases! And they could still update their blog or Instagram account or run their businesses on a regular basis! This taught me that passion helps you find a way. I may have to cut back on some personal goals (no more recitals!) or become a scheduling wizard as long as I can find some small way to do what I love. Which leads me to the next...

2. Be kind to yourself. It's ok if I screw up. It's ok if I don't reach my goals. It's ok if I don't write a new e-book every month, play the violin at Carnegie Hall, become an award-winning artist, become a famous blogger, speak fluently in French, Spanish, Italian and Japanese, raise a successful kid who can do all the above and more, and maintain a full-time job. Even if I make small steps towards just one of my goals, it's ok. No one is judging me except myself and mistakes are acceptable for anyone who is not perfect. (Preferably my mistakes should not involve death or injury though...)

3. For all the complaints I read from new mothers, no one has ever wished they never had their child. And you do hear plenty of complaints, from leaky diapers to full out explosions, screaming tantrums, nights in the hospital. Despite all this, I've not read about a single mother who would give up her child to take back her single life. This gives me hope, that while there will be plenty of crap to clean up, in the end, it's not a rose-coloured vision that everything really does work out in the end. 

So I'm going to follow no.2 when it comes to my kid and take it easy on myself and my future child. He may not become the next President's Scholar but as long as he turns out to be a kind, wise human being, (not a serial killer) that would be all I would ask for.

Blogging Life

Looking back at the posts from January till now, I'm pretty proud that I managed to revive my old blog and I did a lot more writing than I thought I was capable of. This is something new I've learned about myself. Funny thing is that I always thought I had a flair for art more than writing because I was such a visually-oriented person, but in the process of writing, I learned that actually I had more of a flair for writing. Given the right prompts, the ideas flowed more easily on the keyboard than on the drawing pad. 

I'm a bit hesitant to make plans for 2017 because of the kid coming but if there's one thing, I would like to continue blogging as much as I can. The focus may change and I may write a lot more about life with a baby, but I would still want to keep this blog alive to remind me of the writing I completed in 2016 and to spur me on to other creative projects in the future. 

Creative Life

I'm also pretty proud that I dabbled a lot more creatively this year. I did a lot more journalling and in December, I even managed to organize some material into my own e-book. I also managed to do some watercolour painting and make some journals. I also take pride in performing on stage in my first violin recital! Although I played terribly off-key, (-_-!) I take pride in actually mustering the guts to go up and do it, something I'm not sure many 5-month pregnant ladies can claim to do! In some months, I also managed to up my French by learning some grammar. I probably can't order a cup of water in France, but it's still a bit of progress from knowing nothing to knowing something.

When you read the paragraph above, it all seems pretty random but I've come to accept that that's the kind of person I am. I like a certain degree of novelty and variety so I tried several different things each month. What worked for me was listing down all the activities I wanted to try and then making some goals each month, plus making myself accountable by blogging as much as I could about the steps I made. Being a Jack of all trades seems to work better for me than being a Master of one. 

(These techniques I learned from 7 habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey and Better than Before by Gretchen Rubin.)

I also read, read and read. I had a personal goal at the start of the year to read at least one non-fiction book each month, which according to my Goodreads account, I've achieved, so yay! I didn't hit the upgraded goal I set for myself, which was 48 books, but on average, I've completed 3 books each month. I think with the baby, this could be the easier goal for me to reach next year......

With all I've done this year, I think in 2017, I would take a creative break and concentrate on how to take care of my kid. I might still do some light reading and a little bit of doodling here and there but I also think it's prudent that I don't set major goals for myself until I've settled the domestic arrangements with my in-laws and my kid. I also suspect that I may have to resume my fitness goals next year to lose all the postnatal weight! So in 2017, the focus here might be to take it easy and do it for fun till family life becomes more stable. 

In a nutshell...

I guess 2016 wasn't too bad and in retrospect, some of the things that seemed really bad at the time now look very far away. I suppose with distance and reflection, life on the whole really has a lot that we can be grateful for if we choose to see it that way. If there's anything to hope for in 2017, I can only hope that by December 2017, I can look back and see all the good stuff and be filled with the same hope for 2018! Happy new year, everyone and here's to a great 2017!