God is in the details.

So I sit here folding a crane, first thinking "I've got this down" feeling oh so sure of myself. So confident that my mind wanders, wondering if today my daughter will tell me that she's changed her mind and does want a birthday party afterall - her birthday's only a week away. And for those of you well versed in the land of birthday parties, it usually takes more than a week to pull one together, if nothing else to get it on the busy invitees social calendar. But I digress, I'm folding, and making yet another fold and realize, damn I forgot to flip the paper over and now my crane will be inside out (white paper on the outside, color paper on the inside).

Take two
I grab another piece of paper, start again and you would think that the results of the first attempt would have made me realize that I need to pay attention. But no, I get a bit further this time but forget to make a couple of critical folds and realize I've screwed up another crane. The brain keeps drifting. Or let me rephrase, the brain chatter is interfering with this seemingly simple act of folding a crane.

Third time is the charm - well sort of.
I grab a third piece of paper (glad my 1000 crane kit has extras for mistakes - but I wonder just how many extras?) and try again. This time I stay focused long enough to work my way through all the steps but I'm still not pleased with the results. Thinking the crane looks more like a duck than an elegant crane, I decide it's time to call in the professionals and sign up for the origami class at the community center. Clearly, there must be some nuances to this folding technique that I'm just not grasping.

So the process reminded me again that you have to pay attention to the details and stay focus on the task at hand. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe a German born American architect is quoted to have said "God is in the details" - this quote seemed to be part of the curriculum while I was at RISD, each of my professors I believe used it many times to drive home the point of doing a job vs. a job well done. It's a good reminder, even for something that would appear to be as simple as folding a square piece of paper.