I was having a conversation with Danielle last night. Lamenting on how I feel like someone who wants to write a book of poetry, but suddenly realizes that they actually do not possess the skill to write letters. I was admittedly filled with self-doubt, and being a bit melodramatic, but not without reason. Manifesting a vision in clay or on paper has been more challenging than I care to admit here. She said one idea she heard somewhere that was helpful to her was that our tastes and our abilities often take a while to meet. The idea being that we have an established taste in art or music or writing, and if we're trying to create something to our taste we'll often fall short, and because it falls short we assume that it has failed as a work, but this isn't necessarily the case. Yes, over time our skills sharpen as we practice an art, but also over time our tastes begin to accept our own work, to meet our capacity where it is rather than where our tastes initially were in the beginning.