On learning, and fear of failure

I wasn’t going to post today, since I made the Tau Day post yesterday. But I’ve been thinking about writing a post encouraging people to embrace mistakes and go ahead and try things they want to do even if they think they can’t do them. And I just read a post by Tien Chu that says much of what I wanted to say, only better. (Hm, maybe I should take my own advice.) Anyway, I think everyone should go read it: On Developing Skills. Here’s a quote:

Don’t let the fact that your early work sucks bother you. It’s going to suck. It’s good that it sucks, because if you can let go of needing to be good at it, you can get on with the real work, which is improving the skills that you’ll need to produce better work. As a weaving teacher I know tells her students, “Don’t worry about making the first piece perfect. You’re not making a scarf – you’re making a weaver.”

I may yet write my own post about this, but it’s a cornerstone of the way I go about exploring my work with yarn, and other things too.