You're Doing it Wrong

I know the right way to do it but do I do it that Goddamn way?

This last 12 months I’ve taken a picture framing course and a stenciling workshop, and have been trying to ram those two things together so art falls out.

Here are some of the things I have learnt.

• If it looks wet it is wet. Don’t touch it with your idiot fingers it doesn’t need confirming DON’T TOUCH IT! Why did you do that?

• Measure three times, one false start, once wrong and once right. Mark twice because you realised one of the measurements is wrong and caught your mistake. Cut once, on the wrong marking, curse yourself for leaving it there when you knew it was wrong, but there are only two marks how did you cut the one you knew was wrong, that should be a no-brainer, measure everything again, realise you actually measured right the first time (not including the false start) and you did cut on the line you meant to cut you were just under the erroneous impression it was a measurement that had corrected a previous mistake when actually it was just another act in the ongoing comedy of you trying to Do A Thing Any Goddamn Thing.

• Clean everything, clean it again, wear gloves, change the gloves because when you get shit on the gloves they no longer protect your work from your gross hands because the grossness is on the outside of the gloves now gloves aren’t magic change the gloves change the gloves too late now everything has black marks on it.

Why is it so hard to do things properly? I have a long history of tinkering with bits of creativity. I never got especially good but I thought it was about me not applying myself to learning the professional ways to do things. Now that I’ve taken some classes I’m finding lack of knowledge and inexperience can be overcome but some combination of laziness, perverseness, obstinacy, and self-doubt is hobbling my ability to just do the things I know work.

Does anyone else struggle with this?

If the paint looks just-barely-not-sticky do you touch it or leave it alone?