On Facing Imperfection
Today I got a lovely email from a dear friend who knows I am spending a lot of time constructing all the written parts of this website. I am trying to craft an accurate representation in words and images of the work I do and the various parts of me that engage with it. My friend suggested I begin to think about how I would like to create some writing that would “leave a meaningful trail”…ponderings and musings around all the topics that are important to me, or also topics that are just itchy in my brain and the only way I can scratch those itches it to try to form those ideas into sentences and paragraphs.
And because he knows me well, he stressed several times that I not try to make these periodic writings “perfect”. How could he know that I recently finished listening to a series of talks by Brene’ Brown on “The Power of Vulnerability” in which she goes into detail about the many ways we shield ourselves from feeling vulnerable and exposed to ridicule and criticism. How could he have known that the shield that had caught my attention was “perfectionism”? How could he know that I have just yesterday scrawled some notes in my journal on how perfectionism has gotten in the way of so many of my creative endeavors? How could he know how often I’ve been stuck in my writing by trying so hard to perfectly express what I want to say?
It’s because of a sometimes crippling perfectionism that I have been unable to finish the memoir I started writing about 8 years ago. It is this inner desire to get it just right that demands so many hours of mind and heart stifling work on each simple paragraph that eventually kills the inspiration for that paragraph and causes me to forget my through line or arc of intention. I lose my way entirely by agonizing over finding just the right word or phrase or sentence order.
This perfectionism of mine shows up in the backlog of emails that clog my inbox. I can’t seem to answer certain emails because I anticipate how long it will take me and how much mental clarity I will need in order to perfectly express my not-yet-clear feelings about some project or possibility. And I have anxiety attacks at the thought of having any sort of regular deadline for writing even a simple blog post (let alone a well-crafted essay) on whatever is on my mind—as my friend says, “pondering and musings around all the topics which feel important to me.” So it is with this acknowledgement of the psychological hurdle I face that I introduce this group of periodic musings. Wish me luck.