I’ve been noticing a trend lately of bloggers being completely honest about some aspect in their lives, as a way to show how everything isn’t perfect online. “Keeping it real“, if you will.

Here’s my confession for the day: sometimes I make things that I think look bad.

Exhibit A: Funny Bunny

This is one mangled softie. You can’t really tell in the picture, but her legs are all wonky. All four are the same size, which makes the bottom ones seem out of proportion.  They aren’t really in the same plane either; it looks like she’s constantly doing some weird yoga move. Also, her “face” isn’t centered on her head.

Same thing with her ears.

But you know what? She was made with a whole lot of love.

So I’m going to send her to my niece anyway for Easter, and I hope that someday she can see appreciate the intention behind this accidentally-creepy rabbit.

Funny Bunny reminds me of a quotation from Ira Glass on NPR about ambition, intention, and skill:

“All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know it’s normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work … It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions … It’s gonna take a while … You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”

Back to Funny Bunny: she comes bearing chocolate, so I hope that helps.

Have you ever made something that didn’t come out the way you planned? What did you do with it? Did you try to improve it by adding chocolate??