Funny, I never thought I would be learning about myself and life through making jewelry - but somehow I am. Partially, I think having an external perspective that of a blogger and wanting to bring my audience (ha ha, what audience?) something more than a technical walk-through of every piece is making me be a bit more retrospective I guess.
The recent piece I was working on was an extension of my study of iron gates. I had planned to take the circular design in this picture and recreate it using mixed metals. I also wanted it to have a more organic shape so was planning on hammering it to create texture and distort it a bit.
I started by creating copper and silver rings out of wire. And soldering the pieces together, everything looked on track. And execution didn't seem too hard. But once I started hammering to apply texture the piece, it started to fall apart - the hammering made the solder brittle causing it to crack and split in certain areas. I went through the process at least 5 times... Cleaning off old solder with a moore's disc and re-soldering, then re-hammering.
It was getting frustrating, what should have been a fairly easy piece, one that wasn't going to take too long - instead was becaming very cumbersome. At the same time, aesthetically it wasn't working for me. I wasn't liking the mixed metal combo and when I tried the partially finished piece on my wrist, just wasn't really digging it. So - I gave up. And I'm okay with it.
This got me to thinking of times when its okay to give up or walk away from something- Sometimes it takes as much strength to do that as to stick with something. Here's my short list of when its okay to walk away from something:
When you are not liking the final outcome - in this case it was aesthetic..but the final product could take the shape of many things...a friendship, a project, a career path. When you realize you're not liking the final product, whenever in the process that is - I think its okay to stop and move on to something else.
When the process is causing frustration or pain. If you are doing yourself more harm than good by sticking with something..its probably best to quit. Smoking comes to mind, as does working out while injured.
When you'd rather be doing something else. Your time is precious...well i know mine is and in a 3 hour a week jewelry class - it becomes ever more apparent. Spend time on projects I care about, not on ones I've lost interest in.
I've walked away or given up on situations before, but then I've also stuck things out - when you invest so much time, effort and care into something, its hard to walk away..but sometimes its for the best.
When you do you think its okay to be a quitter?
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