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liralen... it's very odd reading that article, for me, and realizing that for most of my life I've gone by the "innate characteristics" model. And when I make a big mistake, I would abandon the whole endeavor because I got convinced that I sucked at whatever it was I was doing. One of the reasons why I changed jobs every two or three years and took the excuse that all the career things say that in order to get raises, that that was what worked.
Xilinx was different. I stuck with them for eight years, and it's the longest I've stayed in one place for that kind of time.
And I'm finally in a situation where I can't just abandon things. And it's with things that I actually believed, for a while, that I had no innate ability at. Spinning and knitting have been my love for so long just because I wasn't expected to do them, and I learned everything through the doing it the hard way and making mistakes on my own without having to present a face to anyone about it. I did it mostly for fun and for myself.
Maybe that's why it was so depressing to be at the guild show, and suddenly worry about how I came across... rather than just enjoying what I was doing and where I was. Maybe I need to go back and figure something out...
It's odd with the drawing and writing and painting and artistic stuff and having people say that I'm "so creative" or "so artistic" when I don't feel so much creative as playing. So maybe I should just play and let myself practice and work at what I want to do.
Oh... my. I just heard this on the yarn craft podcast for this week, from the Yarn Harlot/Stephanie Pearl-McPhee:
Q: I read your blog regularly, and I'm in awe at the ever increasing total for Knitters without Borders. To what do you attribute this stunning success? Do you think knitting attracts generous people or is it something about knitting, is it the wool fumes that inspires generosity?
A: I think knitting creates generous people, you know? I've heard people say, "Oh, uhm, knitters are nice" or that "knitters are the nicest people." We've all had the experience, I think knitters are like plumbers or electricians or, you know, anything. There are nice knitters and not so nice knitters. But she's right in that they are sort of uniformly generous or more generous than you would expect any one group to be, especially considering how diverse we are.
And I think knitting creates generous people by virtue of changing the way we think. In order for someone to be generous and give to charity they have to believe that the small thing they can give is going to make a difference. And knitting is very, very, very good for teaching people that small things can make a difference. Because if you didn't think that small things could make a difference you wouldn't knit. Because the whole thing would seem hopeless. If you couldn't believe that small, individual stitches could add up to be a sweater, you would never embark on this bit of business anyway, you know? So I think that it's the action of knitting that helps people to understand charity and it creates generous people.
Maybe that's a basis for a different way of looking at life. That by learning or doing each little thing the big things will happen...
*laughter* Like writing something or drawing something or nearly anything on a regular basis...
Xilinx was different. I stuck with them for eight years, and it's the longest I've stayed in one place for that kind of time.
And I'm finally in a situation where I can't just abandon things. And it's with things that I actually believed, for a while, that I had no innate ability at. Spinning and knitting have been my love for so long just because I wasn't expected to do them, and I learned everything through the doing it the hard way and making mistakes on my own without having to present a face to anyone about it. I did it mostly for fun and for myself.
Maybe that's why it was so depressing to be at the guild show, and suddenly worry about how I came across... rather than just enjoying what I was doing and where I was. Maybe I need to go back and figure something out...
It's odd with the drawing and writing and painting and artistic stuff and having people say that I'm "so creative" or "so artistic" when I don't feel so much creative as playing. So maybe I should just play and let myself practice and work at what I want to do.
Oh... my. I just heard this on the yarn craft podcast for this week, from the Yarn Harlot/Stephanie Pearl-McPhee:
Q: I read your blog regularly, and I'm in awe at the ever increasing total for Knitters without Borders. To what do you attribute this stunning success? Do you think knitting attracts generous people or is it something about knitting, is it the wool fumes that inspires generosity?
A: I think knitting creates generous people, you know? I've heard people say, "Oh, uhm, knitters are nice" or that "knitters are the nicest people." We've all had the experience, I think knitters are like plumbers or electricians or, you know, anything. There are nice knitters and not so nice knitters. But she's right in that they are sort of uniformly generous or more generous than you would expect any one group to be, especially considering how diverse we are.
And I think knitting creates generous people by virtue of changing the way we think. In order for someone to be generous and give to charity they have to believe that the small thing they can give is going to make a difference. And knitting is very, very, very good for teaching people that small things can make a difference. Because if you didn't think that small things could make a difference you wouldn't knit. Because the whole thing would seem hopeless. If you couldn't believe that small, individual stitches could add up to be a sweater, you would never embark on this bit of business anyway, you know? So I think that it's the action of knitting that helps people to understand charity and it creates generous people.
Maybe that's a basis for a different way of looking at life. That by learning or doing each little thing the big things will happen...
*laughter* Like writing something or drawing something or nearly anything on a regular basis...
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Date: 2007-11-30 07:07 pm (UTC)And the article looks cool, I skimmed a bit of it and will go back when there's more time. And that does make sense too, to encourage and reward kids based on effort and action rather than innate qualities. Otherwise it's like the predestined Calvinism thing, you're either doomed or saved from the start.
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Date: 2007-11-30 11:10 pm (UTC)And, yeah, sometimes when I hear the "I'm doomed" thing it rings that particular bell. Something about innate loserdom just rankles... so maybe I have a chance. *grin*
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Date: 2007-11-30 07:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-11-30 11:13 pm (UTC)I guess I need to just pursue that drawing stuff and really practice and figure out why I'm doing it. *grin* Maybe there's something I have to pursue with a story or two.
You know, with Model 66, there really wasn't an ending to speak of. Though I think we won... someone else who was writing hijacked Argent into his story. Lira turned into the Model 66, kinda, and.. uhm... I think everyone else scattered into the far winds. But the Model 66 and Liralen did break out of the research area, so maybe we won. *laughter*
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Date: 2007-12-01 12:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-01 04:22 am (UTC)