A depressing lack of progress

The second attempt at an acrylic cast for the eyepieces was better, but still not clear enough. I don't know enough of what went wrong to know what to change, so I just went ahead with a third cast. At least the second mold is holding together well.

I chickened out on dropping forty bucks on a proper tubing bender...and destroyed ten bucks of tubing trying to get a smooth bend without.

The laser-cut side pieces for the mask sort of worked. I did have one clever moment; I cut the final set of paper templates out of graph paper, and by setting a grid in InkScape at the same spacing, I could do a point-by-point translation of the shape into software for the laser. Bending turned out to be a huge pain, although it did work. Except for one bend, which snapped and I had to fill it.

Plus, I decided the lumps and cracks on the PETG from the damaged buck were not really acceptable, so I used filler primer and Bondo spot putty to try to clean up the shape a little. And the primer crackled up when sprayed over the Krylon Fusion for Plastic undercoat. Sigh.

I start each day thinking there's so little left I should be able to finish before sunset. And that's been going on for a week now. Depressing the difference between what I think I should be able to accomplish, and what I actually accomplish.

And in the above, my estimation of what will work is obviously also off. I mean; I expect not everything to work. That is a given. But my expectation is towards a certain percentage of things working the first time, and that percentage has not born out at all recently.

Really, those, these are both facets of a basic problem. See if I can put it simply. If I can do something, I undervalue it. Things I know I can do (or think I can do) I don't give myself a lot of credit for, or ask enough money for, or allow enough time for. If I can do them, then they are too simple, too trivial for much excitement.

I reserve that for the things I can't do yet. Which, of course, as soon as I successfully do one (even in the most limited fashion) become translated instantly to the space of "things I already do." Lather, rinse, repeat.

Well, at least the holocron is moving forward again. I have some hope the Academy will actually order a few before the month is out. Not that I have made much of a breakthrough in the designs I mean to put up at the RPF. There, I am still caught on basically that same dilemma; the shapes I know how to realize, I don't feel are worth doing. The shapes that interest me are the ones that remain an unsolved challenge. And so it goes.