Never Perfect the First Try

It's hard to remember sometimes, but nothing's ever perfect the first time. You have a vision of what you want something to look like, you know more or less how you're going to execute it, and then it flops.

It happens in cooking.

It happens in knitting.

It happens in decorating.

It happens in art.

It happens in  life.

I guess there are just enough times when it happens perfectly the first time that I expect it to work the first time, every time. But that's just not the way life works.

There are first drafts, rough drafts, mockups, redos. The final draft - whether it's perfect or just good enough - is rarely the first.

Like these table numbers. I don't know how many "Table 1" cards I've been through. There's one that was all text. That didn't work. Then there was small text and the number. Then medium, then large. Then the question was about their placement. Finally, after a lot of drafts, I settled on something that worked. Only then could I move on to "Table 2."

On the web, especially with Pinterest, it's difficult to remember that the first time doesn't always yield something perfect. It rarely does. It takes work, perseverance, and time to get there.