Permission to Just be Okay

Can I be honest about something? I’m kind of a slut for New Year’s. All of the pomp and occasion and counting down and champagne (sometimes too much of that one, whoops) and - and - well, especially and- the way I let myself completely and utterly off the hook until the ball drop.

December for me is like a free-for-all, a chance to feel accomplished while accomplishing a sum total of nothing (this is one of my favorite feelings in the world next to having people tell me I’m smarter than them). It is during this last month of the year that I lay out all of the amazing things I’m going to accomplish during my next spin around the sun. I start to feel real good, real jacked up on power just imagining the person I’ll be by the end of the next year: strong, impressive, almost unrecognizable, prolific as all hell on half a dozen hugely lucrative creative projects and brimming with unforetold self-confidence - before spending the rest of the current year picking my nose and watching youtube drama videos in a reclining position.

Similar to the way people tend to cram their faces with all their favorite comfort foods right before a diet, I lean hard into all of my favorite time-wasting, destructive habits in the month of December. Struggling to wake up and write? You can sleep in, next year you will write 3x what you’ve written daily at any point in history! Afraid of starting a new venture? Good thing you don’t have to even try to begin until January! Want to drink from noon to bedtime? It’s the holidays and you’re in quarantine, go for it! Don’t want to brush your teeth before bed? Hey, it’s not 2021 yet! Self-care? Never heard of her!

I am a writer. I am also a perfectionist. These do not make good bedfellows. Just writing this piece so far I’ve gone over and edited myself about ten times. The actual time it has taken me to even START TO write is merging on three hours. You read that right. THREE. HOURS. Of sitting, procrastinating at my laptop in bed, doing anything but what I keep telling myself I’ve committed my soul to doing, and why?

I’m afraid I’ll mess up. I’m afraid that I’ll ruin the thing I love forever for myself by doing it anything less than brilliantly. I am afraid of committing the act, of putting the words to the page, and most especially of going on to share those imperfect words with the world. It’s as if in my head there’s some permanent record those words get slated onto, one that builds into a cumulative grade that represents my value as a writer- and, by extension, a person.

I am aware that this sounds a little nuts when I say it ‘out loud’, but as I’ve told my therapist, my family, my friends, and the imaginary person I argue with in the shower, this acknowledgment seems to do nothing to keep it from being a very real and pervasive setback in my life.

I am aware of the millions of articles that will denounce new year’s resolutions as tacky and counter-productive. “If you have something to accomplish, the time to start is NOW!” I don’t disagree. It’s just that this truth, to be quite frank, scares the shit out of me and is easy to cover up in all the hype around the Official Time for New Beginnings™. We all like a good dose of ritual mysticism, and for me, one of the forms that takes is the thrill that goes through my body when the clock strikes twelve on December 31st. There’s a very real feeling in the air, perhaps garnered by all our collective energies, of newfound possibility.

And that’s all well and fine. I’ll probably never stop loving that energy and the celebration of the New Year. I like to celebrate with a few close friends and intense board games (yeah, I know how to party). I like to write myself a letter at the end of the year, and open it the next New Year’s Eve. These are harmless, fun traditions.

But what’s not so harmless is my habit of pushing off my personal growth for later. I’m not only guilty of doing this at the end of each year, but throughout- “I’ll do that next month, next week, tomorrow”, you get the idea. Procrastinators in the club raise your hands!

I suspect a lot of us perfectionists are also procrastinators, people who would rather do nothing than face the fear of doing something and having it come out sub-par. People who put off discovering our true potential until we’ve run out of chances, just because we’re afraid it won’t live up to our dreams, that we’re not actually as great as we imagine we can be. Not only do we miss a lot of the shots we end up not taking, but we tend to diminish the accomplishments we do achieve because we see them as less than ideal. This causes us to feel unable to take anything but short-lived joy in the successful completion of a project, a goal, etc.

Well. Here is where I’ve decided it will (begin to) end for me. I am devoting this year to one thing only: really examining and besting my perfectionism (how ironic is that phrase?) I want to pledge 2021 to be the year I dare to be Just Okay.

When I go to write a story, instead of thinking, “I am about to try to create a masterpiece” I will think “I am going to write something random and mediocre, just for fun.”

When I feel overwhelmed by all the stuff I think I should be doing, I will pick one of those things and outline a single action that I can do with the time that I have in the day. And then I will do it. No thinking twenty steps ahead, no over-analyzing. I will not break my brain overthinking before I start, or trying to outline my whole next week or month. I will simply take one step, complete it as best as I can in a reasonable timespan, and then continue on to the next. And the next. And the next, until I have done the world’s okayest job of everything on my to-do list.

Because here’s the thing, and stop me if you’ve heard this: Perfection is a lie. The time and agony put into a project do not by virtue make it come out better. The best you have is the best you have, no matter how much you gnash your teeth and wail and bolt down cold pizza, and there’s only so much fine-tuning you can do before you are actively making your project worse. I have more than a lurking suspicion that a lot, if not all, of the stories I procrastinated and agonized over writing in college would have turned out just as good as they did in the end if I’d gone into them more than willing to make mistakes, to fool around and free-write and take things one step at a time. The only real difference would be I might’ve stood a chance of actually enjoying the process.

Oh, and my output would be a lot higher. Instead of spending months stressing over a short story and trying to get every little thing perfect, I could spend the same months writing ten imperfect (but possibly even good!) stories and enjoying the ride to boot. Writing is essentially chucking messages-in-a-bottle into the abyss, and the more bottles you have to chuck, the more likely one will hit a roving space alien in the head. This just got weird.

If there’s one thing 2020 taught me it’s not to take my time for granted. Daydreaming about my ideal self is all well and good. But, like it or not, I am not coming to the drafting table as my ideal self. My ideal self is out to lunch somewhere in the land of mythology; they have no idea I even exist. I am coming to the table as I am right now, as my present-day self who is maybe a little overtired or hasn’t brushed their teeth in days or doesn’t have anything figured out yet in terms of life and love and the universe. And I’m sitting down as that imperfect self, and I’m doing the best that that self has to offer at that moment in time. And here’s the banger: in doing that, I’m ever so slowly, imperceptibly narrowing the gap between who I am, and who I want to be.

It certainly won’t be easy. I’ll be turning 32 in a week and I’ve lived my whole life assuming I will always dread the very process I can’t live without. Assuming that excruciating mental anguish and an ever-burgeoning sense of inadequacy go hand in hand with being an artist (movies do nothing to help cleanse this stereotype, by the by). But this is the year where my one true resolution will be to try and get my rampant perfectionism under control so I can, you know, actually enjoy the process of doing the things I enjoy doing. That shouldn’t be too much to ask, right? I would strongly encourage anyone else with similar hang-ups to do the same! We can work together! Form a united front of imperfection! Make wallpapers out of our rejection letters! Feed ourselves with little baby rewards!

This is only the beginning. I’ve announced the what and the why, and now I’m off to find the how. In the coming months I’ll be experimenting with at least a few different methods (mainly writing-related) to trick my inner critic into being distracted so I can let my creative juices flow. I think I just might share a few of them here, so stay tuned.

And Happy New Year!