Yesterday I took my sewing machine off the shelf in my office and put it on the kitchen table. Today, I loosely measured my dog's bed against the size of a small rug and figured that I could make a pillowcase out of the rug. But first I had to rip the seams on three sides, so that I wasn't fighting the already-hemmed (and therefore kind of bulky) edges. I might even iron it instead of winging it.
As I was ripping the seams, I just had this moment of realizing that seam rippers were invented on purpose. Because mistakes happen, and sometimes you need to redo stitches. There's no shame in needing to redo your stitches. But *I* feel like there is shame in making a mistake at all. I'm supposed to get things right from the first attempt, and if I don't get it right, I should at least suffer while I fix it.
No. There are seam rippers. Because the point is the creation of the thing. The garment, the pillowcase, the poem, the drawing. Pencils have erasers because we need to remove that part that didn't work and try again. Seam rippers exist because we need to remove that part that didn't work and try again. White out exists because we need to remove that part that didn't work and try again.
And none of this is shameful. Mistakes aren't shameful. Mistakes are human. And then we invent little stabby swords to make undoing them to try again even easier.