I just came back downstairs after talking to my daughter Emily. She is frustrated by how her drawings have been going tonight. You see; art is Emily's thing. I know I am a little biased, but can honestly say she is talented. I envy her ability. However, she has this issue. She is a perfectionist when it comes to what she draws, sketches, or paints. It has to be as she has seen it in her head, and when the pencil will not cooperate, when the ink does not follow her mind as smoothly as she feels it should, she becomes upset with herself. I hate when she gets that way; she is my little girl, and she always will be. I do not like seeing her upset, for any reason, but I also know that this is the only way she will grow. If it were always easy, she would not be pushing herself to grow, to become better, and to stretch. So I console her and tell her to step away from it, as I sometimes have to do with what I write. That does not help; it needs to be a certain way and she will not be happy until she figures out how to get it to that point.
Her mom is the same way about certain things, particularly those that involve tiny details that "should be like this" but just aren't. I have seen her pour for hours (literally, not figuratively) over cancelled checks and the banks statement to locate a 32 cent error. It was in our favor too. Ok, I did not actually watch her do this for hour (I had things to do), but she did. And she was sincerely happy and relieved when she discovered the banks error. It really did not matter in the grand scheme, but it mattered to her. It had to be fixed. Details, that is her thing. So I have learned to kiss her on the forehead and let her comb through the details, for she could not be happy otherwise.
Sometimes, I laugh to myself how foolish these two beautiful ladies in my life are to become so upset, so focused on such things that they cannot rest. Then I realize that this evening, while Emily was drawing a graphite point across the page of a sketch pad, erasing, gritting her teeth, willing the pencil to do her bidding, and creasing her forehead as she erased once again, I had spent nearly two hours trying to develop an idea, no not an idea, THE RIGHT IDEA, for a four minute video for Thursday night after practice. I still do not have anything. I had a few thoughts, a few things that might have worked, but nothing was just what I wanted. So, I scrapped them. It's frustrating me right now, but I needed to shower, so I had to step away from it for a while. That did not help. Actually, I thought it did for a minute, after an idea came to mind amidst the steam and stream of that nightly ritual, but it wasn't quite right either.
I guess, what it comes down to is this: we are all our own kind of crazy. I am still going to blame Emily's propensity for frustration on Heidi, but she probably pulled just as much of that from me as anyone. No one knows how many pages I have crumbled up, how many digital details I have deleted, simply because I was not happy with them.
Sorry Em.
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