Verschlimmbesserung

To hell with self-doubt, for now...

my friend heather in the middle in the green shirt looking at me and thinking she better not be posting this picture on her Substack

In pottery class, I’ve asked the teacher not to compliment anything I’m doing. The moment she spits out the words “You’re doing great!” or “Now you’ve got it!” I inevitably start doing the exact opposite. I’ve always been like this. The second someone vocalizes that I’m doing a good job, my ego deflates, and I go into a nosedive. In the case of pottery, the whole mess comes spinning and folding out of control. This happened this week at the wheel when the teacher came over with a word of encouragement, and I chastised her for complimenting me. The woman across from me said, “You know there’s a German word for that?”

Verschlimmbesserung [German; fir-sch-lim-bess-er-oong]: an attempted improvement that actually makes things a lot worse.

As soon as she said it, I remembered all those nights at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe in the early 90s in New York when I would progressively come out on top in the poetry slam, and then once I started winning, my will would crumble. All the promise of previous nights would end during the grand slam, with my mentor shaking his head in disappointment from across the room. I used to think I lacked consistency and focus, but for whatever reason—whatever I’m doing—I always come out of the gate gangbusters and then grow worse and worse as time goes on.

This weekend, while I cleaned up Christmas and finished several quilting projects that had languished, I binged a few seasons of The Great British Bake Off in the background. I’ve seen people again and again on there do this same thing. Initially, they are clearly the best, most talented baker, but when the heat turns up, they fail. It is the ones who start out lame and steadily get better and better who are rewarded with the glass cake stand in the end.

My first photography class of the semester is Friday, and today the professor sent an email asking us about a cinematic experiences that made a poignant impression on us. He asks us to identify a film that we found particularly moving from a visual (cinematographic) standpoint and identify one scene and one still from that scene. I selected this one from the 1985 film A Room with a View.

What is great about this scene (aside from the fact that it was my preteen, personal template for romance) is that it is the moment of anticipation. The instant when anything is possible as long as the people in the frame don’t screw it up. So many times, I’ve been in this moment when all the stars align, and all I have to do is take it. And again and again, I’ve blundered (along with countless baking contestants) because I didn’t believe in myself.

Shortly after the word verschlimmbesserung entered my personal vernacular, an amazing thing happened. After five months of pottery class, something in my brain clicked, and I finally got pottery. There was an element to the pull I had not been doing correctly, so every time I pulled (the hand motions in pottery that make the pot elongate, expand, and grow), I did not have control and had to mentally cross my fingers that it would come out OK. I’d heard the teacher vocalize this missing element over and over again, and my brain had translated the instruction to my hands incorrectly every time. BTW, the same thing happened to Sandro on TGBBO in 2022 when he read the directions for a vertical tart incorrectly and didn’t realize it until it was too late. But unlike Sando, I was not in the finals of an internationally-viewed and timed baking competition. As soon as the thing clicked, the whole enterprise opened up for me. This understanding allowed me to place my hands fully on the wheel and take control of the clay for the first time. It would do exactly what my hands told it to do. An A-HA moment heard round the pottery studio, but mainly in my own heart.

Last week, I heard back from my first MFA program. I got in. I felt great and was on a high for a few hours; then, as expected, my self-confidence began to fade. I spent the weekend drowning myself in things to do and distract (see deep knowledge TGBBO comments above), thinking I’m not ready. Monday morning, I zoomed with the head of the program, and you know what? I didn’t falter. I didn’t doubt. I knew exactly who I was and what I wanted to say. When I got off the phone and in the hours/days that followed, I stayed believing in myself. My usual second-guessing never came knocking. Everything clicked.

Wherever I end up, I know I’ll be able to do the work and do it well. Maybe for the first time in my whole life, I am doing exactly what I want to do, and I know without a shadow of a doubt that I am capable. At 52, this is a zillion dollar feeling.

Eyes wide open, hands in the mud.