Modelling > Ideas & Inspiration

Perfect is the enemy of good - Voltaire

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Story:
A New York Times Op-Ed making the rounds, left here to inspire all.

In Praise of Mediocrity

I’m a little surprised by how many people tell me they have no hobbies. It may seem a small thing, but — at the risk of sounding grandiose — I see it as a sign of a civilization in decline. The idea of leisure, after all, is a hard-won achievement; it presupposes that we have overcome the exigencies of brute survival. Yet here in the United States, the wealthiest country in history, we seem to have forgotten the importance of doing things solely because we enjoy them.

Yes, I know: We are all so very busy. Between work and family and social obligations, where are we supposed to find the time?

But there’s a deeper reason, I’ve come to think, that so many people don’t have hobbies: We’re afraid of being bad at them. Or rather, we are intimidated by the expectation — itself a hallmark of our intensely public, performative age — that we must actually be skilled at what we do in our free time. Our “hobbies,” if that’s even the word for them anymore, have become too serious, too demanding, too much an occasion to become anxious about whether you are really the person you claim to be.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/29/opinion/sunday/in-praise-of-mediocrity.html?fbclid=IwAR1nuurm9XIDdvLS6rkBNiKHL66Qam2_DOe5s2FuFr_KVadHWuNd1GEsi2Q

Expanding on that,

Too often, people mistake progress for perfection. They spend more time staring at the weeds than they do assessing the forest. They get lost in the details instead of asking whether their work is moving them in the right direction. And most of all, they are confused about the meaning of “done.”

https://www.forbes.com/sites/deeppatel/2017/06/16/why-perfection-is-the-enemy-of-done/#15dcabe04395

Old Wombat:
Yup!

Robomog:
I'd go along with that

Mog
>^-.-^<

Kerick:
True perfection is beyond our grasp so in trying to achieve it we can never finish the project, whatever that may be. Sooner or later it has to be finished to some degree of quality. The nice thing about our hobby is we can accept what we do this time and strive to do better next time.

apophenia:
Exactly. As a Ben Stiller character in the film Keeping the Faith said: "Embrace your suckiness!".

Pushing pixels is much like scale modelling. If I'm enjoying the work, I keep going. It doesn't matter to me that there's plenty of artists on BtS who blow me out of the water. It doesn't even matter if a particular sideview isn't a 'personal best'. I'm having fun ... and everyone else has the right to avert their gaze  ;)

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