Doing Things Imperfectly – In Public

What does it mean to have a perfect house? Perfect body? Perfect job? What does perfection feel like? Does it have a color, or a taste? Is it even real?

When I stop to think about it, I don’t really know the answer to any of that. In my four decades on earth, I don’t know that I’ve ever really experienced perfection. Not really.

Yet, somehow, I’ve spent a very large portion of those decades aiming for perfection in most things – driving myself bonkers by perpetually falling short of something I don’t even know how to describe. And in spite of this awareness (and many years of therapy/working on it), the idea of doing things imperfectly in front of other people still makes me want to throw up in my mouth a little bit. 

And if you can relate, then, darling, this blog post is for you!

Here’s the radical proposition we’ll be working through: if we want to get out from under the roiling doom cloud of perfectionism and its acid rain of self-criticism, our work begins with permission to fuck some shit up – ideally in front of other people.

Think of it like exposure therapy – which yes, sounds fucking awful. However, if we don’t build up our tolerance for the discomfort of imperfection, then we aren’t ever going to escape our self-imposed perfectionistic straight jackets. (Yes, this post will be littered with all sorts of metaphors for what perfectionism looks/feels like. There are a lot of ways it feels awful and screws up our lives).

Perfectionism Is a Trap!

Perfectionism can sink its venomous fangs into us at any stage of the creative process or the just-trying-to-be-a-person-in-the-world process. We can be bopping along, enjoying our day, doing something we generally feel competent at/about, and then bam! It jumps out and gets us – just like in horror movies, only it’s slashing at our soul instead of our throat. 

This is especially true when we’re trying to do something new. Like a mustachioed villain tying us to the train tracks of life, perfectionism delights in keeping us stuck and getting us to quit before we even begin.

Here’s what that looks like for me: I made my first Instagram reel in Canva last week – a little video with some text promoting my coaching business. I’ve used Canva plenty of times for images and .pdfs, and I had a simple background video of trees in the woods. All I was doing was adding some text. One scene, a bit of text fading in and out. Simple, right? Ha!

Y’all, that fucking 22-second video took me almost 2 hours to make (and I’m still kinda mad about it a week later).

How did this happen? How did I waste a great deal of time and energy on something that isn’t actually that complicated? Well, thanks to a lovely, engrained combination of fixed mindset and perfectionism.

Since I like to think of myself as smart and competent and able to figure things out, from time to time I fall victim to the hubris of “this can’t be that hard. I’m sure I can just do it.” Thus, I forgot the first lesson in doing things I’ve never done before: without learning how, I probably won’t immediately be good at doing the thing. (facepalm).

In hindsight, I likely could have shaved off an hour if I’d spent ten minutes googling and watching some tutorials. That seems entirely sensible and obvious looking back. But, no, my dears, it didn’t even fucking occur to me until I was thirty minutes in and frustrated as hell.

What did I take away from that experience? Fodder for this post, the opportunity to laugh at myself, and a minor victory in my cold war against perfectionism. 

Learning to do new things means making mistakes, fucking shit up, and generally not being instantly amazing at the thing we’re trying to do. Which is SO hard for those of us who source our sense of self and self-worth in being good at shit. 

But that’s how perfectionism builds a wall in front of who we want to be, and we have a choice when we hit that wall. We can smash our faces into it and give up, or we can pick ourselves up and start climbing. 

Perfectionism Is an Asshole (and a Bitch)

Has perfectionism ever actually been nice to you? Does it ever look at a piece of work and say, “Wow, Tabitha, you got it right! That truly is perfect, and I’m so proud of you!”

If it does, then I am super jealous. My inner perfectionist is just a dick – sometimes yelling at me like a football coach, and sometimes showing up as a catty mean girl who leaves me feeling small and ashamed.

Here are some of the stories that came up as I was mucking around, trying to get the damn video together:

• This is such a piece of shit.
• Nobody is going to take me seriously if this isn’t more polished.
• I fucking give up. If I can’t get it right, I don’t want to deal with this.
• Forget it, I’ll just post some stupid static images and be done with it.
• Putting out a video that isn’t professional is going to completely undermine my authority/competence and nobody is going to hire me off of this shit.
• It’s kind of pathetic that this is taking so long and I haven’t even done a good job with it.

There were probably more, but you get the gist. 

Helloooooo, perfectionism! You’re a fucking asshole. And so MEAN!

And with all that vile chatter going on, it’s no wonder I felt frustrated, discouraged, and a bit hopeless in the midst of trying to make something. It’s no wonder I didn’t feel good about the thing I made and almost didn’t finish it, let alone post it to my Instagram. Who would blame me for throwing in the towel? Who would even know!?

I would know. 

And if there’s one thing I’ve been working on since starting this blog, it’s not letting perfectionism win. Fuck that bitch. She don’t get to own me no more! I’ma pick myself up, and climb over that wall, and toss a stick of dynamite behind me.

Fighting the Good Fight Against the Tyranny of Perfect

What I’ve come to discover (which, let’s be real, isn’t a revolutionary concept) is that the way to take back my power from my inner perfectionist is to just fucking do things imperfectly – to muck around and try and fail and try again. (And to split infinitives if I feel like it! Take that, inner grammar nazi)!

Sometimes doing things imperfectly can look like play or creativity – we can experiment and fiddle around and just see what happens. More often, though, doing things imperfectly is fucking hard work. It requires effort and willingness and courage to set aside the voice of perfectionism and remember that doing it imperfectly is the only way to actually get better at things.

Plus, it helps to remember that perfection is imaginary. There’s no such thing as perfect – not really. There’s always something that could be different or “better.”

Thankfully, I don’t have a panel of expert judges following me around and giving me scores for everything I do. And, frankly, that sounds awful. While I would definitely feel gratified to get 10s across the board when I do something amazing, I’d be a lot more likely to drive myself banans obsessing over why the fuck I got a 9.7. 

Thinking back on my video – which I posted because it’s good practice and was absolutely good enough – it’s laughable to think about a panel of judges scoring it. Nobody fucking cares about my Instagram reel and how some of the text fades out a fraction of a second later than the other. Not in the cosmic scheme of things, and not even in the general fucking scheme of things.

That’s why we have to fight back against the asshole voice in our heads and just post that shit. Just share it. Just put it out in the world and trust that it’s good enough. And remember that in modeling our learning publicly, in creating a record of how we evolved, and in letting others witness our growth, we’re actually being of service. 

Showing Our Imperfection Is an Act of Service

Getting to watch or witness or read about someone come into their fullness, their creativity, their career offers a model and encouragement to those just starting out. When I eventually write a book connected to this blog, readers will be able to go all the way back to my first few posts and see how tentatively it started. How it evolved over time. How vulnerable it felt to be putting this out there.

Successful people didn’t just emerge onto the scene in all their competence and glory (see Brené Brown’s first and second TED talks for a clear demonstration of this). Successful people – just like the rest of us – grew and evolved and put in a lot of work. When it’s behind the scenes, when we don’t get to see the multiple drafts or development of the work, we can so easily forget or not realize how many deeply imperfect things went into making something awesome. How many drafts were discarded. How many hours went into shaping the thing. 

So when we let others watch us learn and grow and work on the shit we care about, we’re truly doing them a service. We’re showing others what’s possible by showing up for ourselves. And if I want anything out of all this writing and posting and mucking around in this big, cool life I’m building for myself – it’s for you, dear reader, to see that cool, amazing shit is possible for YOU.

You can do the things. You can chase your dreams. You can become the marvelous, glorious, beautiful version of yourself that you yearn for. Ya just gotta get a bit messy first.