The Virtue of Imperfectionism

I did not write a single word yesterday, besides in my personal journal. I was thinking about it all day as I packed and as I prepared to move and as I spent time with the friends whom I am now living with, with whom I will no longer be living by the end of today. If people had seen me fallen asleep on the couch at 4 pm, exhausted from the emotional overhaul of every current transition, maybe they wouldn't believe that I had been lamenting all day that I was kept away from my commitment to write. Despite the victory I feel for gaining so much regret from not writing, I felt like a failure, and I had to convince myself that just because I could not write one day, did not mean that I would not write the next.

Perfectionism--stifling the imagination, something like what Anne Lamott (previously quoted) would say--can also stifle progress. It would be easy for me, because I am quite the perfectionist, to admit defeat because I realized yesterday that there are going to be days on which spring unexpectedly obstacles that prevent good intentions. I also had a conversation with a dear aunt, and as she encouraged me to be careful to schedule time aside for writing, so that it does not get washed over by insistent opportunities for service, I began to let a new wave of fear creep into all thoughts of my future. How on earth, when a new job begins and I live with four times as many people as I do now, will I ever be able to move my writing out of the dream state? I don't actually know. But what I do know is that I will attempt to do more than I can do, end up doing only what is actually possible, and then accept what I have accomplished.

Imperfectionism--giving full reign to free thought, something like what Anne Lamott would say--permits humans to do well, in spite of themselves. I would like to be a perfect writer who writes every day for three hours, reads for two, works on publishing and research for one; to be a perfect daughter and sister and friend who gives just the right amount of time and attention to all those close to me; to be an ordered woman at which the world marvels at her balancing act of faith, relationships, work, writing, and service, but if I want to be an actual person, then I must content myself with being like the incredible but faulty albatross bird, who never lets his awareness of awfully clumsy landings prevent him from performing the beauty he embodies when he flies.