Ryan's Journal

"My life amounts to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean. Yet what is any ocean, but a multitude of drops?" — David Mitchell

Lafayette, California

Posted at 11:20 pm, February 1st, 2005

I realize that it is a bit ironic to post the following in lieu of writing something original, but I thought it was worthwhile. It comes from Eileen over at homesweetroad.com:

“Art and Fear is my favorite book about creativity. One of the stories that sticks with me is of a pottery class where the teacher divided the class into two groups. One group was to be graded only by the quantity of the pots they made, no matter how awful, and the other only by the quality of the pots, no matter how many. At the end of the semester, those graded on quantity ended up making more and better pots. The quality group was just too paralyzed to get anything done, they didn’t make any progress in their craft. What a great illustration of the value there is in just doing when it comes to art.”

I’ve been struggling with my own motivational lapses lately, and needed the little reminder that it’s almost always better to be doing something rather than doing nothing.

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