The Killjoy of Self-Criticism
kill·joy
- a person who deliberately spoils the enjoyment of others through resentful or overly sober behavior.
I admit that the term "killjoy" doesn't exactly fit here, but I think it captures the essence of what I'm sharing about today.
One of the many Facebook quilting groups I'm a member of is a group dedicated to a block of the month program I participated in a few years ago. A few days ago, one of the other members posted about starting to piece together her quilt top and how she was in tears of discouragement because none of her points were matching and it just wasn't coming together. She had spent so much time working on this quilt and it was a disappointment to her. She also said she was disappointed in herself.
I never like to see someone disappointed or discouraged in their craft, so I responded to her post with this:
I can definitely commiserate with you. I am often so disappointed in the final results of my quilts. I’m not sure why I can’t take my own advice, which is that no one will notice it and it’s all good and so beautiful. Your quilt is absolutely gorgeous!! Just fudge it as much as you can and then step back 5’. Bet you won’t be able to see any “errors.” Hugs and love to you, fellow stitcher!
Why are we so hard on ourselves? Why are we so ready to find fault with what we create? If I can look at someone else's work and see only the beauty of it, why can't I do that with my own work? Is it that I'm so zoomed in on each step of the process that all I see are the "errors" I made? Why can I easily give grace to other makes but not to my own self? I'm not sure I know the answers to these questions, but I will keep encouraging other crafters (and myself) to not be so critical of what they create.
I know that I create because it brings me JOY. I find joy in the process (99% of the time, anyway 😉). The task of taking fabric, needle, and thread and creating something from those materials brings me great joy and personal satisfaction -- usually until I get to the "it's finished" stage. While I have learned to let it go, I am quite often disappointed in the results of what I've worked many, many hours on. This is especially true with my quilting projects. While I'm usually happy with the overall results of my cross stitch projects, I am still very critical of how my stitches look. I don't dwell on it in most cases, but it is still a feeling of disappointment instead of a feeling of joy at having created something with raw materials.
This self-criticism comes in at the end of what has been a very enjoyable process and simply snatches that joy away in a heartbeat! One thing it hasn't done (yet?) is take away my desire to keep making, keep stitching, keep creating. But I have to ask myself -- will it always be so? Will there come a day when the disappointment I know I will feel at the end of the project prevents me from even starting it? I certainly hope not but I would like to have a little more than hope.
Is the self-criticism a had habit I can kick? Can I require myself to put a dollar in the "Self-Criticism Jar" every time I criticize my work? Maybe I should turn these sweet words from my dear friend, Bonnie, into an affirmation and say it to myself every single day: "You are gifted with a passion and the ability to create beautiful things. That gift, my friend, makes this world a beautiful place. Remember that when you are down on yourself." My friend wrote those words to me in 2011, so you can see that this has been a struggle for quite a while now!
I hope we can ALL make the decision to not allow self-criticism to be a killjoy in our creative lives. Let's encourage each other and encourage ourselves. We spend so many enjoyable hours making, and I hope we can learn to find joy in the results as well.
How do you deal with self-criticism, disappointment, and discouragement in your craft?
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