(Pandemic Diary - day 302)

From my journal: 25 December 2020 (Friday)

Sometimes I get something exactly right, and it feels so good.

That happened last night — I nailed that Desert Storm Christmas post on Facebook, got it exactly, perfectly right. It has lots of likes (and a share, and some nice comments) now, and I know that because I can’t keep myself from going back and checking on it, rereading it to make sure I’m not imagining how good it is.

So here’s the thing. It took me at least an hour to get to that final perfect draft of it. And it’s only a paragraph, and it’s fairly simple and straightforward. Most of that time went to cutting it down, making it shorter and tighter and getting to just the right words, and no more words than necessary.

Getting it right is hard work.

I’ve just used the words “exactly right”, “perfection”, and “perfect” to describe this post, and that’s the thing I want to spend some time with. Because I am constantly talking about perfection as a barrier, even an enemy, trying to get myself not to be a slave to the idea of getting it just right. And it’s not just me, it’s Seth Godin (who is quite wise) and a whole bunch of other people, all of them saying that it won’t be perfect, it doesn’t have to be perfect, that perfection is a barrier and perfectionism is a character flaw.

How do I reconcile this?

“Perfectionism is only a handicap if you’re overcommitted.” That’s one way I try to understand it. I like the quote (from my journal 19 May 2017), and it’s true to an extent, but it isn’t completely true. Just as the things all those people say are true, but not completely true.

The trap I’ve fallen into on this is that I’m looking for a black-and-white understanding of something that just doesn’t work that way. Perfectionism is not the issue, allowing perfectionism to debilitate you is the issue. “Perfect” is not the issue, your definition of perfect, your perception of it and your standards for it are the issue. Too much or too little is the issue, and they work on sliding scales, on spectrums that are hard to quantify.

This doesn’t resolve anything, but at least it gives me some reassurance and it refreshes my understanding of myself and my way forward. My inner perfectionist is neither a friend nor an enemy, only a tool I must learn to use properly. That’s the real challenge.