UNSURE

A few weeks ago I signed for a screen printing class. It was just one session, a couple hours one evening to get familiar with a brand new studio that opened in the neighborhood. Upon registering, I received an email about our pre-class assignment. Create an image for a "thank you" card and email it to the instructor. Easy enough, right?

Well, when I sat down and opened my sketchbook, I promptly froze. How do I make ONE thank you card? Because this obviously has to be the best-thank-you-card-ever. One image. One shot to get it right. This was my one chance to overcome all of the ugly thank you cards I had seen in stores and thought, "Oh I could do better." The pressure sent me into a panic, and I ended up closing my sketchbook.

The next morning, my shame of not turning in an assignment (the horror!) triumphed over my panic. I quickly wrote three thank-you's, declared myself the least creative person ever and emailed it along. I wanted to hide my wobbly handwritten "thank you's" as class began, while undoubtedly everyone else's design were more interesting than mine.

But eventually I forgot about them. I loved being back in a studio environment, setting up my station, lining up the paper, pulling the ink through the screen and revealing the results. I experimented with different techniques and remembered why I had signed up in the first place, just to create for fun.

The design was the smallest piece, and I had almost let it stop me from creating at all. I had mistaken being UNSURE as a negative roadblock, instead of a critical part of a positive process. The evening was a great reminder that pushing through the resistance is the best way to ensure it is not a permanent state. What lies on the other side of being UNSURE is the good stuff in life.