Out of my comfort zone

My sister belongs to the Redditch Kingfisher Rotary Club, who do all kinds of fundraising/awareness events, and Seahorse Conservation is one such of these.  Last week the club held an online silk painting craft event and Amanda invited me to take part, too.  Now, I'll be perfectly honest and say that I really wasn't looking forward to taking part because a) painting is really out of my comfort zone, and b) I wasn't feeling too good but of course I'd told my sister that I'd love to join in.....so I didn't think I could back out 😄

After a somewhat fraught time trying to get connected to the Zoom meeting on the tablet (I would have much preferred to use our "big" computer but space is very tight where we have it set up), I eventually got there and was able to join in with the class.  Emma (the tutor) took us through all the steps clearly but I confess that I did struggle and didn't find it the relaxing exercise that everyone else seemed to be enjoying!  Now I must stress that this had nothing whatsoever to do with Emma's teaching; it was all down to my own internal dialogue of how bad a job I was making of the painting and how good everyone else's efforts were in comparison to mine.  I really struggle with the belief that I am creative in any way; whenever I make something I look at it and just feel that I am such a bumbling amateur.  That inner voice can be terribly discouraging 😩

Anyhoo, I plodded on and managed to complete the painting.  And to be honest, for a very first attempt at silk painting, it's not turned out too horrendous!

Of course my knee-jerk reaction was that I would never try silk painting again.....but I have leftover paint so perhaps I will have another go at some point, after all 😉 

Using the tablet was a tad difficult as the screen is small, and I did find it a little hard to see exactly what Emma was doing.  If I ever take part in any other online classes, I will just try to make as large a working space as I can with our desktop computer.