Conflicted Mind

Last night, several of my mommy friends and I got together to do a craft. That massive whooshing sound you hear is the wind being knocked out of you as you realize that I did in fact engage in arts and crafts.
I know. So totally not like me since it involves a free and unrepressed spirit!
In all actuality, I have a very strong creative side and I would love to be far more artsy fartsy but the perfectionist side is WAY stronger. I'm dead serious when I tell people that I'm a temper tantrum waiting to happen when it comes to arts and crafts.
If I can't get it right on the first (or really up to three) tries then I want absolutely nothing to do with it. And if the final product is anything less than stellar, I feel it's been a total waste.
I'm also like that with shooting pool and bowling, incidentally. Two things that dh excels at...go figure.
I'm not naturally inclined towards drawing but I used to love working with paints and clay when I was younger. I was a very good creative writer and I loved expressing myself that way (hence the creation of this blog, as a means to keep the creative juices trickling if not flowing).
Secretly, I would love to scrapbook because I do think the final product is terrific and I whole heartily endorse creating family memories. But, besides the fact that it elicits a near cult mentality and can almost bankrupt you, it involves a great deal of precision and flair. Which you would think would suit me since I am a perfectionist. However, I reiterate the flaw in me--if I can't get it right right away, I want nothing to do with it.
I've always been blessed in academics and fairly blessed in athletics that I've never really needed to try very hard. As a result, I tend to just avoid those things that do not come easily to me as they necessitate effort that I'm not used to offering forth.
I can remember as a teenager trying out various hairstyles and trying to get them to look just right. Especially the au naturale that really took two hours to create. Since I just could not do it to my standards of flawlessness, I just gave up. That's why to this day I am a wash and go kind of girl. I try to pass it off as my pragmatic side but really it's the screaming two year old in me.
Back to last night, my friend who hostessed the party really has an incredibly artistic nature. I saw her son's room for the first time and was blown away by the mural she'd created through stencils and free-hand drawing. It's truly the room you dream of giving your child---planets, stars, and a rocket painted on the walls. We were making name plaques for our children's doors. As though one wouldn't be enough to push me around the bend, I had two to make. My girl friend suggested (after I'd used a stencil somewhat successfully and chicken scratched their names on their stars) that I add some free-hand lines to the stenciled fish and to add sea grass. The thought of doing anything based upon my own creativity (just picking the right stencil and writing two names was enough for me) truly struck fear in my soul.
What if I messed up? What if they looked weird? What if....I ruined the whole damn thing? Then everyone would know and my boys wouldn't have name plaques . Or worse, I'd have to show my dh, who wouldn't say they looked bad, he just wouldn't say they looked good---which is even worse because it means that he couldn't come up with anything nice to say so he just didn't say anything.
Ahh the neurotic ramblings of a perfectionist.
Anyway, this is why I don't engage in arts and crafts!
But in the end, I joked that worst case scenario, I would just tell the boys when they're older that they made them! "What, don't you remember?"
So ended the tug of war between my left brain and right brain. "Come on, you know you want to create art. Everyone else is doing it." "Don't succumb to the pressure. It's not worth it."
It ended up a tie--I did my project but I'm totally not satisfied with the outcome; however, as a glutton for punishment, I did hang them on the boys' respective doors. Maybe to show off or maybe to remind myself that art is not my forte.
Or maybe it's just practical to know whose room is whose (in case I forget or something because we have so many random people wandering through). Or to give the boys a sense of independent identity...
John Nash watch out, my mind is more beautiful now.