Beginner
I have this memory of playing with a friend, where she wanted to imagine what we’d be doing when we grew up. I remember her talking about going to work in an office, sitting at her own desk with her own computer, and working the day happily away. Now I’ve got a really excellent (sometimes TOO excellent) imagination, but I could NOT picture myself doing the same.
Not that I have anything against anyone who does work in an office or at a computer - but I can no more imagine myself in front of a screen all day than I can imagine myself as a ski instructor. Or a doctor. I just don’t fit.
Which is why, you’ll now understand, it’s been such a change for me to have spent my last few months with this as my work-view.
When I set out to start making my e-courses in earnest (February I think?), I had it in my head that I could film everything in a month. Edit those videos and have them live in one month more. I thought, April or May TOPS and the intro courses would be available to anyone wanting to learn.
But the thing I love and hate and always forget about myself is that my creative eyes are bigger than my stomach. I am forever biting off more than I can chew. If I didn’t have this trait, I might never take on big projects because I’d understand their magnitude - but because this flaw/strength exists in me, I make the leap anyways. While I usually manage to land on my feet and come out the better for my struggles in the end, it means I must also watch myself be surprised again and again by unforeseen difficulties that inevitably blow up my unrealistic timelines. Sigh.
Filming was…much trickier than I anticipated. There were video quality issues, sound issues, lighting issues - all that needed to be sorted out slowly and methodically. And now the editing. Learning to store my massive video files, figuring out how to splice them together and organize them in a way that makes learning easy. Cutting out my deer-in-the-headlights looks when I’d lose my train of thought, and then finding ways to splice together rough endings and new starts.
I just forgot about the fact that I’d never done this before. That I’d dreamed it and schemed it to the point where it already felt real to me. I was a complete beginner in the medium of videography trying to do the work of a professional. So of course it’s taken what feels like an embarrassingly long time (even though there’s not one thing embarrassing about how hard I’ve been working) to get to where I’m at now.
Which is in the midst of editing unit 3 (out of 4 total units - the end is in sight!) and the whole thing is coming together. I’ve put in everything I can think of to help someone learn the basics of metalsmithing from scratch, and I kind of want to cry and give myself a hug because of how right it feels to be putting this together. It may take me another age to get it online (I still have to navigate the learning of an e-course platform…ugh!) but I WILL get it done.
My current computer tolerance is set at about two hours…and then I need a break. So along with spinning, I’ve been cutting more stones. I think of these little creative moments like eating a good meal before a long hike - I won’t be able to make it if I don’t keep my energy reserves up.
Though I’ve been enjoying polishing up my Lake Superior finds, the other day I went digging in my drawer of “Pretty Rocks Found in the Mountains” and unearthed a hunk of rose quartz almost the size of my fist. I can’t for the life of me remember where I picked it up, just that one smooth face caught the light and before I knew it, it was fully unearthed and stuffed in my pack. Last night, ten minutes with a crow bar and a hammer broke it into slightly more manageable chunks…
…and today I polished one up!
It’s the sweetest little button of quartz, the loveliest pale, petal-pink shade, completely shot through with little imperfections that look like snowflakes beneath the surface. It is forever catching the light and flashing it back in rainbow hues - a photo does it little justice.
But while I’m of course excited about how this little experiment turned out, I’m more excited about what it represents for me.
Over the past few years there have been so many more discussions about the ethical nature of stones in jewelry making - essentially where and how were they mined/cut, and by whom. If you start looking it can get…ugly really fast.
But here…here is a stone I found on the ground, in foothills I’ve been exploring since my childhood. My hands picked it out of the dirt, cut it, shaped it, polished it to a shine. I KNOW where this stone came from.
Here’s just one more place in my life where I’m currently a beginner…it’s another fresh start where anything feels possible.
