Poor butterfly

For my niece Alyssah's birthday, she wanted to do a Paint-and-Sip, though with nothing harder than soda. She is still well below age, as are most of her siblings. Ordinarily, we go to Chuck E Cheese, but she is getting too old for that. Also, there is a plague that would prevent children from going to that infection vector. (That establishment may not come out on the other side of COVID, should we ever reach it.)

Under the tutelage of a woman who does this as a side hustle, we are all to paint a butterfly before a sunset. I've watched--but not participated in--enough Bob Ross to understand that I should come out the other end of this with a reasonable facsimile of a painting if I follow the steps. Everything else is happy accidents.

"Happy accidents" are not a concept I can allow.

My family doesn't care that my painting is imperfect. Up to painting the bug body (which we can all agree is trash in the provided picture), they were praising my effort. I couldn't stand the canvas in front of me because I knew how clearly it was unfixable. I had to walk away from it several times and convince myself to return to complete the task. I wanted an excuse so that I could give up and watch other people work, half of whom were under the age of thirteen.

It would have been easier if all of us who were of age were drinking, as these events intend. If anyone ever needed to loosen up, it's me, who could not even enjoy recreationally attempting something creative.

I can acknowledge that this trait is far from the best part of me, that a party activity makes me irritable because I am publicly doing poorly. I will be left with evidence of my imperfection in a field I have never studied, basically the first time I've attempted it as an adult. I cannot forgive myself for insufficiency when I have no way of practicing to be better before making my debut. I cannot stand letting people see my lack.

Did the rest of my family do better? Possibly not, though I did not look to theirs for comparison. My lovely wife, who has a bachelor's degree in art and looked at a reference bug, did better. I did not compare my effort to hers either. She should do better than I did.

We can agree that hers is better

I do not have the indifference to allow myself mistakes. Failing is a direct, glaring reflection on me. It is not that I think I'm stupid. I plainly am not, whatever flaws I have. Not succeeding makes me feel closer to incompetent.

When I was in high school, I reached a level of mathematics at which I did not intuitively excel, so I became avoidant. I did not want to go to my teacher and reveal I did not understand. I could not bring myself to ask for help because then I became the sort of person who needed help. That was far too pejorative, particularly when I still made passing grades. I did not take statistics in college, so I did not pursue a psychology path even though I otherwise loved it. I closed myself off from a future because it wounded my ego less than staying after school to figure out why this math perplexed me.

Even when I returned to that high school for substitute teaching, that teacher remembered how I had not tried. I did not want to explain to him that I had too many psychological blocks for that, but that I had tried the best I could under the circumstances. It wasn't laziness but that being helped brought me close to a panic attack.

As a former gifted kid, something at which I am not above average fills me with anxiety.

Once I became the main cook in my household, I found a few dozen meals I could reliably prepare and focused on tweaking them to Amber's tastes. (I remain only basic at being able to improvise in the kitchen. I could make something palatable left in the kitchen with soy sauce, a tomato product, honey, garlic, and a protein. I can barely move beyond that.) Whenever one of my recipes did not work, whenever we were out of an ingredient that I swore we had, I felt sick. Amber is a forgiving diner, but I could not repent enough that I had used too much red pepper or that Caprese pasta revolts her.

I hated painting the moment that I knew that I would not meet the platonic ideal. I joked that this was why I'm a writer. I can edit my work closer to perfection before I must put it before anyone's eyes. Also, I have so far exceeded that mythic ten thousand hours to build expertise that I sometimes struggle articulating a discipline that is all but intuitive now.

As a result of this, I am reluctant to try new things where someone could see me. It was a small point of why I lost interest in swing dancing. They demanded fluidity at once and were almost cultish in shunning beginners, anyone who would not be willing to pay to attend several swing retreats a month. (This is, remarkably, not hyperbole.)

This block is why I do not have an interest in further formal education. I still relentlessly research my own curriculum, mostly about science, politics, and the occult. In short, topics on which I can write. I simply don't want a stranger to grade my progress. I want to be the one pushing myself, and I want to do it in private. You may have the spiffed up final product, but nothing before.

This, too, is why I go cold when someone suggests a competitive board game. I am fine if we are collaborating toward a goal, as someone else might be able to spackle in any cracks in my knowledge. Being trapped losing for an hour with no chance of succeeding nauseates me, particularly as a social activity. Amber quipped recently that she is better at chess than I am, which is likely true, but I could not recollect a time we played together. In playing against the person in my life whom I trust the most, I lost enough times years ago that I avoided even mentioning the game in her presence.

This is doubly notable because I gained my new friends Amanda and Aaron at a board game night. I went to an activity that bugs me and then tried to figure out a way not to play. (We did play several games. I lost more than I won. It was fun and I did not die.)

Being aware of this neurosis does not conquer it, though it made me finish a butterfly painting, because it gave me lessons on how I could do better next time. Possibly, the biggest lesson would be to avoid paint-and-sips.

Soon in Xenology: Probably more about COVID-19, since, you know, the world is ending and everything.

last watched: Travelers
reading: The Future of Us