Devils and Musings…

Several musings have been tapping me on the shoulder today…

…or maybe demons. I’m not quite sure yet.

I am once again standing at an all too familiar crossroads in my life. This journey has finally lead me to the point where I am starting to hear the same question from parents and friends: what are you going to do with this? I heard this tune as I was making the final arrangements for my bachelors degree. I hear it from time to time when I attend my Thursday evening belly dance class. Now I am heading into Course 3 of my four course cake decorating classes with the nagging suspicion that this is all for nothing. Several times I have been asked why I didn’t just stick with the two basic courses and forget the advanced stuff. Well, at least I can answer that pretty easily: that’s not my way. What’s the point of learning only the simple stuff? That seems so half-assed. Why sink so much money into supplies and classes if I’m not going to learn everything I can? Once I undertake a new hobby, it’s full steam ahead until I exhaust all of the options. The problem is that after course 4 ends at the end of June, there may not be any other options. Right now I have excuses to practice and make cakes – I need to keep my skills fresh for class. I may know how to decorate cakes now, but so what? I’m not a marketing or a business person so I couldn’t see myself starting my own cake business. I don’t exactly have the funds to invest, either. Plus, as an honorable mention to my limits, I know I am afraid of failure. I can’t just quit the daytime bread and butter job in favor of working part time in a bakery, either.
This afternoon I pulled my certificates and cake photos and arranged them neatly in my little book of artwork. As I flipped through sketches, photos, creations, and old poems I realized I was putting my cakes in with my ‘just another hobby’ collection. That’s when the demon whispered in my ear: what are you going to do with this? Chalk it up as another private hobby amidst the 20 or 30 you already have? That seems like such a letdown.

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I have been identifying my limits left and right this weekend. I know I have many limits that keep me from doing the things I love, but when have I ever defied a limit? I started thinking fondly about the moment I realized I could actually sketch. For the longest time I was one of the “I can only draw stick figures” parrots. How did I know this? Well, because only artists could draw and I wasn’t an artist. I was a singer. One day at band practice in high school, the pit/percussion section decided we wanted our own t-shirts. We had chosen a tiny, colorful, artistic, flowing image of music notes. The problem was that we needed someone to draw this to full scale. Our section leader asked for volunteers. Silence. I’m a little fuzzy on the details from there, but somehow I was drafted for this task. I sat down and stared at the tiny image, wondering how I was going to do this. All I could remember from past art classes was the art teacher telling us to draw one line at a time exactly as we see it. Following this advice I set to work. A little while later I held up the finished product to a small chorus of praise and encouragement. I was amazed. Had I really drawn this?
A few days later the boredom was kicking in as I was lying on my bed at home. I picked up an old Garfield comic book and decided to give it another go. With my eyes as my guide, I drew up a larger image of the tiny Garfield in the book. When I proudly showed it to my mom, she accused me of tracing it. I showed her the image in the comic book. Clearly, it was much smaller than the one with my signature. I think she was almost impressed.
I haven’t sketched anything in years but I sometimes flip through my art book wondering what I would have missed in my life if I’d never discovered I could do this. I would still be saying ‘I can’t’.