It’s nice to quit. Sometimes.

Sometimes you can just bang your head against a wall over and over again, trying to get closer to some perceived goal.

And sometimes you can just…stop.

Today, I decided to do the latter.

To back up a bit:
I’ve been traveling for about five weeks in WV and PA, seeing my chosen family, doing some pottery, and picking up some stuff I had in storage. Well, okay, a lot of stuff I had in storage. A lot. I got back a week ago, and promptly filled my living room and half my studio with crap to sort, clean, put away, or dispose of. It’s a massive job, and while I’m slowly taking care of it, my house is made of chaos.

I don’t like chaos, especially when I have work to do. Which, of course, I do.

See, I’ve got this big, important, and—most importantly—timely dance/puppetry piece to work on, and all this chaos is doing my head in. But since the project is timely, I can’t just do the logical thing and set it aside until I’ve cleaned up the abode*. I just sort of have to power through it, and get the project done. It’s not exactly the setting most conducive to my creative process.

The plan had been to use a form of papercraft to make one mask and three rod puppet heads, so that’s what I worked on yesterday and today. Well, that’s what I’ve been trying to do, at least, and it’s been the aforementioned banging-head-against-wall. This evening, it occurred to me to stop banging my head, and (to torture the metaphor a little) find myself a window.

My husband has taught me over the past few years that when I start playing the head-wall-bangy game the best thing for me to do is to stop and play some sort of easy, mindless, video game. Seriously. I never would pegged myself for a gamer, but few things turn off that part of my brain responsible for overthinking, recriminations, and drama like picking up a fantasy RPG video game and smashing small orcs**. I did that last night, and I was magically bestowed with enough perspective to think of a different way to attack the papercraft thing. And then I had to do it again this afternoon after that didn’t work either, and and and…you know what? I’m deciding to tactically quit.

The thing is, I’m not awesome at papercraft. I love the way it looks, and I can work the shapes out in my head, but somewhere between my head and my hands communication breaks down and things don’t always come out well. It’s especially frustrating to me, since I’m lucky enough to not often have that head/hands problem. But I also know I’m really good at sculpting with leather. So, that’s what I’m gonna do. I’ll do a mix of leather-sculpting and papercraft, and I’ll make some cool faces, and then I can move on to sorting five years of crap and reclaiming my studio.***

I guess what I’m saying is two-fold:
Know how to manipulate your creative brain to best effect. For me, I know that when I’m stuck I really need to walk away from the problem and fire up a game. And since more often than not I feel ten times better than I did before, and even more often than that my brain has solved the problem without me, it doesn’t count as slacking. It counts as knowing how your brain works, and getting the most out of it. It’s simply knowing how to use a tool.
And,
Know when to stop banging your head against the wall. It sounds so obvious, but often we’re told that we have to just keep trying, no matter. “If at first you don’t succeed, try try again.” We’re told quitting is bad. We’re told that if we quit we’re weak, or less than. Horse hockey.**** There’s another, better, aphorism that went around the stage shop when I was doing theatrical set design: “Try smarter, not harder.” I like that one so much more. It occurred to me today that I was just trying harder, making myself do something I wasn’t awesome at (when I don’t have the time to muck about with it), when what I really should be doing is trying smarter, using something I’m good at to solve the problem.

You know, sometimes banging your head against the wall is really awesome. Because it feels so nice when you stop.

*and, frankly, recuperated from being gone over a month. I need a vacation after that trip.
**or goblins. Or bats. Or—if I’m playing Civ Rev—the Aztecs.
*** And possibly sitting the hell down and staring at a wall for three days. I’m telling you; traveling for that long, being away from your new husband, is effing exhausting.
****J’adore, Colonel Sherman T. Potter.