Drawings and Luck

I am a very fortunate person.  Very.  Yesterday, a weekend day, I had to call for help twice:  My air conditioning broke in this very hot weather (mice in the compressor chewed thru the wires and blew a fuse) and later I had to call a plumber because of a leak in my kitchen faucet spewing water everywhere.  Why is that lucky?  Because when I called, both of them came within 60-90 minutes even though it was a weekend, both were wonderful and both problems got resolved completely.

I'm also very lucky because I have water.  And because I even have air conditioning.  But especially because I have water, when so many in the world do not have safe drinking water for miles, let alone in their homes.  I know how lucky I am.

Below are two pieces:  the first is my attempt to draw a tangle called Drawings (pronounced "Draw-Wings").  I've never been all that good at this tangle but I love the way others do it.  Yesterday I was determined to improve so I drew it on a post-it note and gave myself permission to mess up bigtime if that's what happened.  So of course it came out pretty well.

Tangle: Drawings. On a post-it note (yes, the note is purple). Micron 01 and General's Chalk White Pencil.

I was really interested to see how well it came out when I deliberately reminded myself that the outcome did not matter.  Just the practice.

After doing the post-it, I looked over at a tile I'd been stuck on for several days.  I mean, I was REALLY stuck.  I was planning to discard it.  It was not symmetrical.  The center sphere wasn't really a sphere.  I had no idea what to do next and most of it was blank.  I'd done the two tangles Snelly (as the "string" or container) and inserted the tangle Aleuba--this is a tile for Hanny Nura's Full Moon Mosaic on FB where each month she suggests a string and one or two tangles, always involving the moon somehow, and then everyone does what they like with them.  Including adding other tangles.  So I'd created the string and inserted the second tangle she suggested but the tile looked awful.

What the hell, I thought, I'll throw in some Drawings tangles in those big empty spaces.  Just for practice--this can't get any worse.   And then I'll add a bit of color.  What came out was this, which I quite like even though it's still asymmetrical.

Tangles: Snelly (as the string), Aleuba, and Drawings. Micron 01 and Generals Chalk Pencils.

Well of course the big lessons are:  Unless it's a life or death issue (just about never), give myself permission to screw up and see what happens.  And the typical, constant lesson from Zentangle® is:  don't give up on something.  Keep working.  If it fails, so what?  It's just a fifty-cent tile.  It's just practice.  I feel like I got lucky again.

Seems to me that all of life is just practice.  Right?

The more I practice, the luckier I get.
(Gene Sarazen)