Falling down and maybe getting back up.

So far this year, I've really wanted to just focus on building and maybe reviewing (but not so much because it's already a pretty saturated topic), and not much happened that I thought would be worth writing about. It's been mostly personal issues the last year and half since the MG Zaku II. But I'm coming back and I'd like to think that it's with a stronger passion for what I'm doing.



I don't want to ever wonder why I'm not building or make up reasons/excuses for why I haven't done something I love, and quite frankly, such a large part of my life. I know for a fact that part of putting off projects was largely due to the fear of failure and not reaching my unrealistically high expectations. What's the point of goals and dreams if we set them too low, right? It's the whole "shoot for the moon" mentality. The other side to this fear of failure is the overly optimistic "you won't learn if you don't fail,"  and "failure is the first step to success." They're both obviously true, but the reality is that it's not always easy to get back up from a failure, and sometimes aiming too high is what really makes failure come crashing down even harder. Though, I am starting to notice a trend towards setting realistic and attainable goals, which is what I'm trying to hone in on. As I mentioned in the last WIP, doing shading and multicolor masking is probably aiming a bit higher than I can reach, so I dialed it back and stuck to just shading. I'm glad I did, because I'd be a whole lot more disappointed once I peel that masking tape off to see how much I messed up.

Me (right) getting my ass kicked by shading (left)

I'm getting a better sense of pacing my goals, but the problem I came across when shading wasn't the fear of failure. I knew in my mind, and kept repeating to myself, "it's okay to not get it right the first time. just gotta keep trying and not quit." And that was it. I wasn't afraid of failing, but then what? I took a step back and looked at my disappointing work. Yeah, I failed and it's not a big deal, but I'm pretty damn frustrated at my results. I wanted to stop. I wanted to go back on my goals and go for the simple "standard" paint job that I did in the past with spray cans. I wanted to succeed so badly, that I was willing to take the easy route because I would get that satisfaction.

If it wasn't obvious from the last post, the satisfaction I got when I finished the Hi-Mock was something that would definitely last longer than that instant gratification of a simple and familiar paint job. I tend to get ramble-y on these posts because it's just a place for my brain to vomit what it's been trying to process. At the end of it all, it's not really the fear of failure that stops me (or maybe even other people), but its the difficulty and inability to see progress in all the effort I put in. "All that time and effort, and it amounts to nothing."

My reaction after the first shading session...

I know the shading was pretty heavy, and the hand painted details weren't that great, and the paint chipping during assembly are all places for improvement, but I think I'm ready to fail, and keep on failing. I'm going to stop trying to be a perfectionist, even though I'm nowhere near good enough to even be considered one, and I'm going to focus on those little wins. I'm actually pretty confident my next attempt at preshading will go really well. So much so that I'm more interested in trying out post-shading/highlighting, and then if that goes well, modulation!

There's really nothing new or eye-opening in this post. It's just me on my misadventure, tripping on a bunch of hurdles I set up. If I'm going to be building every week, I'm defintely going to need to have fun! And on that note, I'm off to Gouf Around some more, this time with sponge chipping and dry brushing!