The strangest sort of vanity.

As a child I didn't like revising for exams. It wasn't because I found the task hard or boring. I just didn't like realising there may be something about a subject I didn't know. Maybe it was fear of failure that motivated this strange behaviour. it is possible I feared that if there was something I didn't know then I'd never know it. Silly, stupid and dangerous behaviour which i fought to control. I was the same with magic tricks as a kid. When given a magic set I'd try to make all the tricks work without reading the instructions because "I should be able to work it out!". Utter nonsense, at that point in my life I didn't know any fundamentals of magic to build on, but I still got angry with myself for not being able to work things out unaided. I am still guilty of this possibly indicator of mental illness at times. When reading a book I may skim some parts as if telling myself I'm not really reading it , thus necessitating a good hard slap from my super-ego. This is why I prefer to think of magic as a craft and not an art. To me an art is a pure expression in some form, which magic when performed with heart can be. But a craft is somethign you continually work at to improve. Thus you are allowed to be rubbish when you start, and even have days when you are not as fluent in your moves as you'd like. The point is to practise even when your messing up to remind yourself that this is all part of the process of getting better. All to often I may be feeling a little rough and so spend time reading books on the performance aspect instead of learning new tricks or more importantly, getting my current repertoire smooth and fluid. There's nothing wrong with this from time to time, showmanship IS important, but it's important to realise when you are studying for the the right reason and when you're just hiding from the practise because you've become afraid of it.