Art is difficult

Being a Virgo means a lot of great qualities and a lot of flaws. One of them (whichever of the two categories you want to include it into) is being critical. Now, see, most people don’t take criticism well, which makes me an unpopular person, despite my good intentions. On the other hand, some people take it quite well and are appreciative.

There is this drive for improvement and for me criticising comes from a need to make things better. In fact, I am most critical with myself. How else am I ever going to improve unless I give myself a good talking to and generally think that nothing I make (art, craft) is good enough? (Ahem.)

This morning while drinking my coffee and browsing through Instagram posts I came across a digital art poster showing some text with a grammar error in it. It was actually a quote from a famous writer, so it’s rather interesting how the mistake happened. Beautiful poster, nice graphic design work, but the subject (“we”) and the predicate (“knows”) didn’t agree, which killed it for me. The fun part is that the post had over 100 comments (all appreciative) and no one noticed the error.

My first thought was to comment and let her know about the error. I even googled the quote to see if I was right. (Yes, I am that nice and considerate.)

But then I thought that if, after all the laudatory comments from everyone, I comment about the agreement between a subject and a predicate (that no one cares about) I would sound like an idiot.

Then I thought maybe I should DM her instead and spare her of the public shaming (and protect myself from potential replies from the angry mob).

(Please note the overuse of the word “thought”, yes, I do overthink everything. See? Self-criticism, right here.)

So what did I do in the end?

Yes, you guessed it right, I let it go and got on with my life. In the big scheme of things, this is indeed such a minor issue.

Good call? I don’t know. As the French would say, “La critique est aisée, mais l’art est difficile”. Right?