When a Giftee Throws Away Your Homemade Gift

Ian Ry has a question that I'm dying to answer uh this is a real Maker's dilemma and it had a real resonance with me so Ian Ry says recently I made a small gig Giga for myself nothing special but I felt the Maker's pride of accomplishment and realizing I had excess materials I made another one for a family member couple days later when I was talking to them on the phone and asked if they got it and what they thought of it they confirmed that they did get it but they had no use for it so they threw it away they knew prior to this that I'd made it this has really knocked my confidence because although the original was for myself the fact that it was so casually dismissed and tossed after I'd made the effort is quite hurtful I find myself very reluctant to continue making in my head because in my head it's clearly no good have you had something like this happen and if so how do you get past that I don't want to stop making but I don't want this feeling of being no good yeah no that's real um I'm going to tell three stories here uh and I'm not sure I have a specific answer for how to recover from from something like this except time because um what you're going through is real and I've gone through it um I had a uh uh uh uh the first story I want to tell is from high school um I was building lots of models model kits um and I was buying lots of model kits and I was painting them the way they should be painted and I was getting pretty good at it and then I started cutting them up and modifying them and I started like I took a pair of wings from a plane model I had and I mounted them backwards and the plane looked really good and it was I seamed the wings and it was a professional looking job I was like 16 17 years old and then um uh um I'm going to be circumspect about how I tell you the details of this but uh I messed up with a family member um an authority family member and they got very angry at me for messing up and they woke me up on a Saturday morning after a snowstorm I'd left their uh I'd left the door to an important I had left a door open during a snowstorm and snow had piled into a space and this family member got so mad they came into my room they woke me up and they were like as in their anger they picked up a bunch of the stuff on my desk and they threw it and they destroyed it and um one of them was the model and um the the the the the aftermath of that isn't important the aftermath with me on that model is because I didn't build another plastic model for years yeah I was I think I was 16 17 um I don't think I built another plastic I like I was so sad at having lost that piece having lost that kind of magic fire because the piece itself was an Evidence of me branching out beyond my skill set and finding some meat there and then that had had been taken from me now I had another experience with this already which was um in my freshman year sophomore year in high school I had discovered Gary Benton's class Gary Benton was the art teacher at Sleepy Hollow High School in the 80s um and he was a real early Mentor for me saw that I was clever with the making of things and gave me Total Access to all the stuff they had in the art department and I executed a lot I there's so many stories to tell you about my high school art uh Shenanigans um and over the sophomore and Junior years I filled the art room like when we had a corregated cardboard uh assignment to make something out of corrugated cardboard I went and found some boxes and brought them home and my dad was like oh cardboard boxes are fine but let me take you to the art store where you can buy un broken sheets of corrugated cardboard and I was like 36x 24 in sheets of corrugated cardboard I never imagined such a thing could be purchased by humans seeing it as a real art material instead of just as a cardboard box was a seminal moment for me um and so when we got a cardboard a corrugated cardboard assignment to make something out of only corrugated cardboard I made like eight things I couldn't stop I made a record player I made a guitar I made the MTV logo um I made all sorts of different things and they ended up you know when you have one of those students in your art Department you just start throwing their stuff up and so uh by the end of my junior year the there was just tons and tons and tons of the things that I had built up in the art room and I had great affection for those things they were mine they were just happened to be there and I came in in the beginning of my senior year uh and all of it was gone and uh what had turned out was that the principal had wanted to save space and had called the art teacher and said you got to clean out the art room and she was getting married and was nowhere near the town and so the principal went in and threw out everything he thought needed to be thrown out out of the art room this is what I was told and they threw out everything I had built I I I I was so upset about losing that large cache of stuff um that I consulted an attorney to find out that there was I had no no no case to stand on um and the loss of those pieces I felt keenly on the order of years last story I'm going to tell you um many many years ago uh a close relative of mine was getting married and I said to them hey you've just bought a new house uh I thought the wedding present that I would like to give you would be to weld you something for your house specifically like maybe a dish rack above the kitchen or some po holding things or a special door latch for your gate or something like that I weld I make stuff out of steel I'd love to make something for your new house and then uh I didn't get a response to that and so a few months later I said to that F few weeks later I said to that family member hey I never got a response from you about what um what You' like me to make you for your house and they said oh yeah they said when you make something for when you make something it's all about you really it's not about me so look you could just get me a picture frame or a mug or something is what this family member said to me and I was so surprised by how much that hurt I was shocked by how much that hurt when we make stuff and we give that stuff to other people we we don't always realize how vulnerable we are in that moment because we've taken a part of ourselves and we have spent part of our precious Wild One Life here on Earth executing something and we've given it to somebody um when fans bring me our stuff at the tables I often thank them for the time because the time was spent in a kind of a meditation but that vulnerability that that you have when you give something of yours away is completely real and I fully understand how you feel about this I would be be very upset by that I would be like you couldn't just give it back to me did it have to go to the trash what are you a monster were you raised it like who ho who I like there's so much about this that makes me crazy I can only assume that they might be slightly neurodivergent and that this wasn't an aggressive act [Music] um yeah uh and so the fact is is that most of the world really appreciates when you make something and you give it to them but it's really vital that you maintain a knowledge of the fact that in this exchange you are a vulnerable party um because yeah that kind of what feels like a rejection can push you off axis and like I said I didn't in both of those cases of losing the stuff in the art department and the the the model getting destroyed in both of those cases man I I there was a long Tale on the order of like a year or two before I felt like getting my hands back into it so time time time and iteration that person throwing out the thing you made has no bearing on your skill as a maker that is the truth of the situation it does not diminish any way the thing that you made their appreciation was not necessary for that object you made to be fully extent in the world those things are true whether you feel them emotionally is another matter but those things are true um Ian rby thanks for such a really important question to answer and to talk about as a maker thank you for watching that video are you as sick of the tosses to membership as I am good because here's a brand new one that I recorded today and it's nice and short there are three tiers to tested membership and they all offer awesome stuff find out about it by clicking the join link below we'll see you there

Channel: Adam Savage’s Tested

Views: 250,604

Keywords: tested, adam savage, adam savage tested, adam savage maker, what to do when someone doesnt like your gift, how to deal when someone doesnt like your homemade gift, homemade gift etiquette, making homemade christmas gifts, how to restore self confidence, how to restore your self confidence, how to restore confidence in yourself

Id: OzYZGEzzvBM

Length: 9min 28sec (568 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 08 2024