75: Who You're Around Is What You Think Is Normal

Who You're Around Is What You Think Is Normal The people you're consistently around are doing something to your work right now. Not dramatically. Quietly. They're setting your baseline for what good looks like, what's possible, and - this is the part that doesn't get said enough - what's acceptable. And most makers have never deliberately chosen that environment. They've just accumulated it through convenience and availability and ended up wherever was easiest to access. The default environment in most areas of making is not neutral. In sewing, patternmaking, and textile work broadly, there is a significant amount of advice circulating freely that is simply wrong - techniques passed on by people who have never seriously studied the craft, standards of fit and construction so low that most people don't recognize them as low anymore because they've never seen anything better. When that becomes the norm, the environment is actively lowering your standard. And if that's the environment you're primarily in, it's lowering yours too - without you necessarily realizing it's happening. This is episode nine in an ongoing series on building a stronger creative practice. Drawing on research into Vygotsky's zone of proximal development and peer effects in skill development, and grounded in a frank examination of the difference between seeking out better environments for inspiration versus information, this episode makes the case that deliberately choosing your environment is not about personal ambition. It's about protecting your own standards from a default that is working against them. The Ten Principles for a Stronger Creative Practice download includes the structured exercise for this principle. Link to The 10 Principles: http://www.virginialeighstudio.com/learn. The VirginiaLeighStudio Home page: https://www.virginialeighstudio.com Chapters 00:00 - Your Environment Is Setting Your Baseline Right Now 02:39 - If You're the Smartest Person in the Room 03:23 - Comfort and Competence Feel Like Progress - They're Often Not 04:48 - How Environments Set the Baseline: The Mechanism 05:38 - Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development 06:40 - Peer Effects: The Standard Pulls You Up or Pulls You Down 07:55 - Inspiration vs. Information: The Distinction That Matters 09:25 - What Information Actually Looks Like in Practice 10:02 - The Cottonwood Arts Festival and Why I Force Myself to Ask 12:14 - Choosing Your Environment Deliberately vs. Accumulating It by Default 12:40 - The Default Environment Is Actively Mediocre 14:43 - Why the People You Learn From Matter As Much As What They Teach Connect with Virginia: Website = https://www.virginialeighstudio.com Instagram = https://www.instagram.com/virginialeighstudio/ Facebook = https://www.facebook.com/virginialeighstudio