FIRESIDE CHAT

A Balance must be found between finding new ways to be creative and knowing what medium best projects our artistic voice. The fireside chat really made me think about my own artistic voice and if I am becoming too comfortable in my art.

            When I first started thinking about this assignment it was not to difficult to come up with my topic. The frustration showed itself in how I was to represent this idea. So first let me explain what my topic really meant to me in more concrete words. I think for a long time and even now one of my greatest fears is failure. I have worked hard my whole life to be a kind of jack-of-all-trades. The down side to this is I’m not all that great at anything, the upside it that its hard to really fail in front of people when you are okay at most things. This fear comes from being a consistent failure growing up. I failed at the sports I tried I failed at many of my intellectual pursuits and I failed in most social settings. I head one talent one skill. I could draw. When that came up in social settings for a moment I was cool I was not the underdog. Thus started my pursuit to know about everything. If I heard about a video game I had to play it if I there was a new toy or game or ripstick thing I had to have it. I don’t feel like this desire is uncommon maybe just the level to which I perused it.

            I stared to really see some of the flaws of this way of living as I learned about the Dunning Kruger Effect. More or less it just explains the fact that those who are really bad at something or really dumb about a thing are often likely to overestimate their ability and thus not recognize the greatness of others. The more I thought about this to me the first step in breaking this effect is failing. Once we fail we are more likely to estimate the level at which we at accurately and also we gain a greater appreciation of those who truly excel.

            I think in this way I could have had a better presentation. My original idea was to fail at something in front of everybody. The problem was first that I could think of a good way to do this and second I thought it might be to “boring”. So in many ways my portraying failure through something I’m good at invalidates my ideas. Then again there is something to be said for my true artistic voice and the fact that I portrayed this idea through something that is not only true to me but is also something I used to fail at.