Self Portrait Tuesday

There is a specific moment in every drawing that I do when I want to give up. It comes early on, after I have drawn no more than a handful of lines are on the page. I stop for a second to take a deeper breath in and I realize that what I have so far on the page resembles nothing at all, not the image in front of me, not the reflection of that image in my brain, not anything that I can recognize. The lines look utterly random, utterly empty of any potential for transformation. And I want to throw pencil or pen or charcoal or crayon on the floor and stomp on it; I want to go outside and burn my drawing pad and give up drawing forever.

It feels like a small miracle every time I step over this momentary despair and keep going. I scribble and trace and erase and scratch and scrawl more lines, and then the marks on the page begin to take shape; I can see a leg and the shadows on an arm and, if I squint, even a believable face. It isn't so hard to finish the drawing any more, even if it's not a good drawing. It isn't so hard to imagine myself trying again on the next page of my drawing pad, and getting better.

I get so easily discouraged that sometimes I marvel that I have gotten as far as I have with writing and drawing and learning. In grade school I dreaded those endurance races we had to run in P.E. class; I always came in last, made horrible time, and had to stand for five minutes bent over with my hands on my knees to regain my breath. I get a knot in my stomach just remembering that. The most I can accomplish are short spurts of work, and then I get tired and upset and lose faith in myself. I learned to rest for a bit, then start over. I still can't fully accept the fact that I have to stop more often than other people, that it will take me longer to get to the finish line, that once there I will need more time to recover than everyone else. But I'm trying. I keep telling myself: whatever you do, don't stop. After all, even if you get to the finish line when it's dark and everyone has gone home, it still counts.