By Philippa Baines

Perfectionism extended

I wanted to develop Henry’s reflection on perfectionism. It’s like the double edge sword of self-criticism – you need it to get better, but too much means you hack your own hands off and can’t make anything.

For you years prior to SCA, I’d find it a challenge to produce anything because a) I thought my work would be rubbish, b) I was rubbish and c) everyone else would think I was rubbish.

The gift of SCA’s gruelling work schedule is you have no time to think about how much you loathe yourself as you’ve got to get work done.

The ‘unthinkability’ of SCA has led me to improve and become ‘not rubbish’.

Something I’d have called a miracle a year ago.

Moving from term 2 to 3, I am getting ‘insights’ and strategies infinitely better than four months ago. This is good as it helps in communications when your message makes sense.

A problem still remains and that is, craft.

Adobe Illustrator is not fantastic for my mental wellbeing. The number of times I nearly punched my screen in battling with this most fickle software is alarming. Luckily, I have the ever-patient Jono on hand to teach me how to tinker with it. I’m hoping to spend more time with Illustrator, or try Affinity Design to see if we get on better. Then I might be able to call myself a mac monkey at the very least. Perfectionism would be great to achieve in this area but I’m still in the consciously incompetent stage of development.

Writing is a different matter. I’ve been doing it for a long time and feel fairly confident with it but have a long way to go. I’ve written maybe one line of any real worth, ‘Ramp it up’ with respects to a disabled skateboarding campaign and I find it rather depressing that’s been the peak of my ability so far. I can’t really get perfectionist about my writing too much yet. If my ideas are not great, generally, I won’t knuckle down into craft because I refine the strategy more.

Term three I hope to produce brilliant ideas, brilliant lines and good art direction. Here’s hoping.

Then and only then, will I let my perfectionism return to its full strength.