We live in an instant gratification society now. It is a fact, granted as technology gets better things will get to be more and more instant. So when people try to learn things that take serious time and talent to work on ie. writing, playing instruments, or even just drawing it gets hard.

An old highschool teacher of mine used to tell us that suffering is good for the soul.  I always ignored his advice but there really can be a level of truth from it.  After all serious skills do require serious time and patience to learn.  I have been playing guitar off and on (mostly off) for around 7 years now and it takes serious time to get comfortable with an instrument.  This period I call the grunt period, a time when your playing sounds awful until finally your hands warm up and you can feel good with your instrument.  Over time as you gain muscle memory the grunt period goes down more and more thus the term ‘practice makes perfect’ like this is really any surprise to anybody.

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It’s only drawing!

Within the last year I have been stuck doing the same thing again this time for drawing.  Most people look at drawing as a tough skill almost impossible by some.  People are so scared of what others think about their work they avoid drawing all together.  We have managed to stop ourselves before even beginning.  After taking a very intensive drawing class my teacher kept on beating in our heads over and over again “It’s only drawing!”  We heard this so many times that we got sick of it and kept on shrugging it off.  Sure it takes awhile to do something photo realistic but with time and effort it is possible.  Once you get better its like an adrenaline rush sort of like beating a really difficult game.  Difficult games are fun to beat not because they are easy but because they are hard, so try and trudge through your grunt period you’d be surprised what you can do.

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Comments (5)
  • al gates on Jul 16, 2009

    -Read this Interesting take on instant gratification: The Society of Instant Gratification (article): http://tr.im/mIth

  • adegan on Jul 16, 2009

    It’s only drawing till you decide to invade Poland

  • N. Lloyd Andrews on Jul 16, 2009

    Good piece!

    This philosophy can be applied to many areas of life.

  • Emo Stomper on Jul 19, 2009

    That’s exactly what I told my teacher I used the exact Hitler analogy.

  • QiuXiang on Nov 10, 2010

    look on my new article.
    http://ity.im/0ob5

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