My coworker is regularly able to do what I am unable to - to recognize that a job has gone wrong before it's even finished, to stop, and to start over. I am irrationally afraid of doing the same. I will follow a task through to completion, through blinding frustration, even though I know it is doomed. My problem soldering a sax post last week was just such a task. Instead of stopping when I realized solder wouldn't flow because of the lacquer around the joint, I forged ahead, blasting the post with heat and flux until I'd burned off enough lacquer to allow the solder to flow. It created a huge mess and took extra time to clean up, which I fully knew and expected as I was doing it, but I kept going anyway.
Maybe I'm afraid that starting over will force me to admit that I don't always know what I'm doing. Maybe it's because I constantly try to avoid sunk costs, even though they are by their very definition irretrievable and utterly meaningless. M spent at least an hour shaping a brass rod to braze into a broken sax neck strap ring, realized the fit wasn't that great before he started brazing, and then started over again with a fresh length of rod to create a better fitting piece. He spent at least another hour on that, but ended up with a great result. Why I'm so afraid of doing the same I don't know - maybe because the prospect of one major failure is somehow better to me than two minor failures followed by a third successful attempt. The possibility that my second attempt might be no more successful than the first is upsetting, but it's one that I need to face. I know that I'll only get better through trying things until I get them right. I need to do a better job of overcoming my tendency to put on blinders and press on, and become more self-evaluative.
I need to remember that a self-criticism of my work is not the same as self-loathing.
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