Bigger Rooms for More Nail Holes

Twenty-something or so nail holes grace the walls of our new apartment. This number sporadically climbs week to week alongside my determination as an amateur interior stylist to properly massage everything into its rightful place. Some mornings I awaken with a sobering hunch that the eager placement of the wall sconce hung beside the dining room table two weeks ago was a mistake. This matter is critically reassessed as I brush my teeth while scoping out other potential wall spaces around the house. And just like that, the swift transplanting of the sconce to a new spot above the bedroom nightstand leaves behind yet another two new nail holes to add to the growing collection.

Fortunately, the repercussions from error for these nails are quite low -- the near invisibility of these holes will allow them to go unnoticed by most. That's why I keep reaching for them. And while I'm typically prone to holding myself to a perfectionist's standards of getting things right the first time, the forgivingness of these nails has been encouraging me to revert back to being more of an iterator; to try things for the sake of just trying instead of feeling the pressing need to be immediately impressive at all things I attempt -- a lost art for most of us adults.

I once read about a ceramics professor who ran an experiment with her students. Half of the class would be graded on the quality of their final pieces while the other half would be graded solely on the number of pieces produced. By the end of the course, the ones who were graded on quantity also ended up far surpassing the rest of the students on the level of quality they were able to achieve. The seismic force of iterations; of greater breathing room and lower stakes; of reframing each attempt as a sort of ongoing R&D process rather than as an immediate success or failure.

And so I continue my sporadic hammering, knowing that by the time I've scattered enough holes around the house, what will go noticed is the pristine placement of objects hung on the final resting places of the thoroughly trial-and-errored nails.