I’ve never been good at correcting, or even acknowledging my mistakes. Since childhood, I’ve had this internalized idea that success means doing something right on the first try. If I can’t do something right the first time, I just move on to something else. My tea tray and office tray project gave me a built-in opportunity to break that pattern.

How did I convince myself to acknowledge my mistakes and learn from them? I was sneaky. I started at the beginning, by planning and purchasing the supplies for two trays at once. In my normal drive for efficiency, I assumed I would build the trays concurrently. That didn’t happen.

I started the tea tray right away. After what I assumed would take one evening dragged into a second day, I was determined to finish as soon as I could. The result was predictably sloppy. It was still serviceable and looked fine from afar, but I know the bottom is not as sturdy as it could be and the dividers are not evenly placed.

Normally, if I had only planned to make one tray, I would decide that it was fine and never try something like that again. But I had all these cereal boxes and sheets of scrapbook paper haphazardly stored in my living room. Every time my cats would start to mess with them was reminded of the next project in my queue. One that I now knew would take longer than originally planned.

So I waited until I knew I would have enough time. Revolutionary idea, I know. But for someone so impulsive, it kind of is. I remembered exactly what I wanted to change from my first attempt. I wanted to make the tray itself out of a single piece of cardboard and interlock the dividers rather than just gluing them. When I reached a point where I started doing sloppy work, I packed up for the day and returned when I had more energy to focus. The end result is not perfect, but it the outside is made of one piece of cardboard and the dividers interlock.  

I’m not too much of a perfectionist that I’ll redo them right away, but I’m also not to scared to attempt them again in the future.

-Erica

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