It’s been a while since I put out a quote from one of my main heroes in life. Will Rogers speaks to me like no other person. He died almost a dozen years before I was born, but he left behind a legacy of words the size of a library. Naively, I kinda dream that I am a 21st century version of him. At one time, Will Rogers quotes dominated RJsCorner. If you search for his name here, you will get hundreds of posts I have already written. This is yet another one. There can never be too many, as far as I am concerned.

Making mistakes is just a normal way of learning for most of us. As Will’s quote above says, making no mistakes means that you are doing nothing. We are often uncomfortable admitting mistakes, but mistakes are simply a path to a better solution. Ok, enough of this rambling, it’s time to get to the main topic of this post about making mistakes.

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If you are a regular here, you know that I am currently in the process of becoming more artsy. I am looking at seven different paths to becoming more artsy. My first attempt at sketching/doodling, which was literally nothing but mistakes. But the more I practice, the better I am becoming. I am now to the point that I am not TOTALLY ashamed to show you some of my artsy attempts. Making mistakes in almost all parts of life is how we learn, how we become prolific at the task at hand.

Over the past few months, I have been trying many different media to find the one I am drawn to. (pun intended 😎) I have tried my hand at doodling, sketching, abstracts, and am now looking at watercoloring. It seems that all these things have one redeeming quality or another that attracts me. My next attempt at mistakes will likely be acrylic.

One of the things that make retirement from the working world so enjoyable is that my time is my own, and how I spend it is totally up to me. I think that by the end of this year, I will have settled on a path forward for this new project, and maybe the rest of my life.

Closing out with another thought about mistakes, I still vividly remember talking to one of my bosses about taking a different approach to a project he had given me. I told him there were some risks in the path, he told me “We want you to take risks, as long as you never fail”. That reply totally dumbstruck me. I left his office without saying a word. This would not be the last time I heard the above. With time, I learned to just ignore this warning.