Perfection is a curse.
My father was a draughtsman. He made a career of drafting the engineer’s plans. He was meticulous. He was exact, rendering exquisite works of precision. I loved watching my father wield his pen, whether it was his signature on a check or a calligraphy acrostic for a family member’s birthday, the result was always a work of art.
My father was also a man of ideas, but not ideas that he had a facility to execute. They were rarely architectural or artistic and more often commercial or entrepreneurial. The success of his endeavors was limited. I didn’t have any insight to my father’s business affairs but as I became privy to the haphazard details of a fledgling enterprise I would fixate on perceived flaws. I always thought my father’s problem was being DIY when he needed to be more HID… have it done. He just wasn’t as perfect an entrepreneur as he was a draughtsman. Some times things need to be delegated.
But still, he tried. He ventured. He stretched.
I have fantastic visions for projects but I get paralyzed by how to translate the pictures in my mind into codes I don’t speak. So nothing gets said. Because it must perfect. Because I hate to fail.
Silly. I know. All the growth mindset wisdom tells me that failure is where the greatest lessons are learned. It’s not like I haven’t learned a lot, I’ve got a treasure trove of failures. But the pendulum seems to swing between trying to do it all and doing nothing. It is madness to write a story by going back to the beginning every time there’s a typo. Every draft cannot be pristine. There are a lot of memes about perfect visualization for 2020 but it’s just not realistic for me.
So I’m starting the year with an experiment grounded in gratitude. 20 days of gratitude followed by 20 days of action inspired by the feelings of gratitude. That’s it. No vision to manifest (well there is a vague idea of what I want) but the focus is on taking action and building on it. Venturing to try. Embracing the process.
Stay tuned. 20×20
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