As you get better you get worse?

It’s amazing how much harder on yourself you become as you gain proficiency.

I’ve been taking wheel throwing classes for 5 months over the course of 2022, and just this week finally feel like I know what I’m doing. In class this week I had a magical breakthrough and now actually make something competent more times than not. The instructor even commented on how much I’d improved and told me it’s time to move onto the next level class. 

I usually go to open studio Friday afternoons and play. I have a vast collection of misshapen tiny pots that show my progress. In this week’s studio time I scrapped everything I made the week before because I knew I could do better, and I only kept one new thing that I threw - and I’ll probably scrap it on Friday. Now that I know what good looks like, what I did was objectively not good. And I have enough imperfect tiny pots. 

Have any of you gone through a similar journey when learning something new?