If you can’t read this post or would rather listen to it, there’s a voiceover button up top. I read it out loud, and there might be music accompanying it. Maybe you’re someone who likes to read along with voiceover? Or not. This is your experience. Make it your own.
I want to write about perfectionism.
I wrote that sentence and then ordered and ate a mole enchiladas dinner platter while watching a movie I’ve seen over 20 times. That was two weeks ago.
I want to write about perfectionism, and I want my writing about perfectionism to be perfect, and I know it never will be because perfect is an illusion.
Maybe that’s why I want my writing to be perfect. Maybe I need to want my writing to be perfect to avoid the act of writing; the terror of the feeling that nothing new will come, even though something always does.
Trying to achieve an illusion that I don't even believe in really mucks up my creative flow.
I don’t know if I use commas or semicolons correctly. Maybe you don’t know either. Or, maybe you’re a copyeditor and you do. Perfectionism is the art of creating flaws. It’s hard to start a thing you’ve already branded as flawed. Especially when you’re programmed to need the thing you’re creating to be perfect in order to feel safe.
Maybe I’ll hire a copyeditor. A copyeditor will make my writing better, but not perfect. But better is better than perfect, by default, because it’s not an illusion.
Maybe write more than 200 words before you assemble a team, Mindy?
Pfft, maybe I need to assemble a team first in order to feel safe to write more words, Mindy.
There’s a fine line between writing and talk-typing to yourself via a google document.
Do I even want to write about perfectionism?
Maybe I just want to write.
Do I even want to write?
Maybe I just want to, want to write?
What do I want?
Mindy, what do you want?
Mindy, I want to connect.
Perfectionism is the enemy of connection. It’s the creation of a false treasure map that leads you back to yourself, but in a spiraling versus healing kind of way. In my experience.
This perfectionism is not mine. It’s probably not yours either. It’s something we catch when we’re vulnerable. It’s a marketing tool. It’s white supremacy.
I read something, somewhere, that said some words like “don’t strive for perfection, strive for excellence.”
No thank you.
So I push through the terror of the feeling that nothing new will come, just enough to start the thing I want to do? I stumble through it on the fumes of accepting that the thing will never be perfect, but that I’m still worthy because my worth isn’t connected to the thing at all? And then, I also have to “strive for excellence?”
No thank you.
I won’t strive to make this excellent, but I will strive to make this something.
Maybe I need to reframe. Maybe I need to define what excellence is to me? Okay. Excellence is finishing this post, publishing it, and making some effort to share it.
Do you ache from carrying the weight of all the things you didn’t start and all the things you finished but never shared? In this essay I will teach you The Top Five Ways to Hack Your Way Back from Perfectionism Slack–
I’m relieved I’m writing this for me and not being paid to teach you how to combat perfectionism or define perfectionism in a new aha-like way. I’m happy to be out here in this document, fighting for each word, each minute my body stays in this chair.
Guess what? I have a body. I have a body that does not like when I sit down to write. It gets riled up as it tries to protect me from the process. Headaches, acid reflux, rapid heartbeat, I’m itchy, I’m thirsty, I’m hungry, I’m tired, my legs are restless, and what I need to do right now is learn how to play the accordion.
I wrote a book. That’s not a brag, but necessary information. I never intended to write a whole book. I didn’t really know how. An editor at big publishing house saw me perform stand up comedy and liked my voice. I plan to share more on my experience writing the book in future posts, but until then here’s what you need to know. I got signed on a partial. The book was a young adult fiction novel about a girl whose mom was sick. My mom died in the middle of one of the edits. Things got murky between me and my protagonist. After 6 years and 5 major revisions, it got published 11 years ago.
My plan was to write another book. I sat down every day for the next year plus and I did the work of staring at my screen and then doing something else. I was supposed to write another book, I wanted to write another book, and I never did.
“Mindy, after you wrote that sentence, where did you feel it in your body?”
I’m in somatic therapy now, and that’s a somatic therapy question.
What do I feel in my body? I ache. I ache from carrying the weight of all the things I didn’t start and all the things I finished but never shared.
“No, Mindy. Where? Where do you feel it in your body?”
Oh. Um. I feel it wherever shame is, that’s where I feel it.
“And, where is that in your body? What does shame feel like in your body?”
Like twine is weaving through my ribs, lacing up the cage like a corset to the top of my sternum before being pulled hard and then tied around my throat.
This is the part of the writing process where I breathe and stretch. Drink some tea and breathe and stretch. Circle my chair like a cat to a pillow. Sit. Type. Breathe.
I started The Mindy 500 because I’m tired of being out of practice and I’m exhausted from trying to control the practice of being out of practice.
According to my extensive (I googled it once) research, the word perfect is from the Latin word perficĕre, with per meaning complete and fàcere meaning to do something. So any action that has been completed is by definition perfect.
I want to write about perfectionism and—I did. Action completed.
Perfect.
Mindy, I relate to this more than I could ever say in a comment or anywhere else. I love how you ended this and am going to keep that in mind every time I’m tempted to let my perfectionism get in the way of completing something, which is pretty much every time I write or start any type of creative project.