OK so the deadline countdown has begun for Battle of the Beadsmith and I am hanging in (or is that hanging on) to represent myself and my country, important as there are only three of us from the UK. I kid you not, the pressure is phenomenal! I'm loving what fellow contestant Nancy Dale has been posting in her blog... explaining so well that horrible sensation of creating and hating the results, the bleak days of non inspiration and the admissions to self of failure... how familiar is that just now!
I'm hating the endless stream of jaw droppingly gorgeous beadwork coming through via the organiser from contestants, the equivalent of boxers facing off before a big fight and guess what... it works!
So I pose this question, how can creativity ever really be a competition?
Moving on from that...Three cheers and a yeay! to the clever, confident, quick to finish souls who have already submitted, I'd love to know how they silenced the inner critics. In fact someone did comment that the dialogues of how we all got to the end game will be just as fascinating as the finished pieces.
How have I wrestled my inner critic to the ground?, by making deals in my head.
Deal one, I don't do huge... so I won't try to do huge just because I have seen some awesome huge.
Deal two, don't begin to compete! by which I mean, in my head the competition can't exist, I'm beading and creating to tell a story I'd want to tell anyway.
Deal three, accept the frivolity of it all.one piece of beadwork doesn't define me or contain my soul... it's just one piece of beadwork I really enjoyed making...
I hope...
Just a few more tweeks and I'll be done...
Aww who'm I kidding, knees are weak, feel queasy when in the presence of my half finished creation, have no idea how to finish it off and only 9 days to go...
... reaching for the chocolate again...
