This Will Not Be Perfect
Yet I still had to find the perfect picture…
In my first Medium Story, I wrote an interesting line that someone actually commented on: “LOL…this is taking me quite a bit longer than I’d like; I’ve self-diagnosed myself as a perfectionist”.
Of course this was in reference to me writing that post. It took me over 2 hours for what became a 3 minute read. My second post was a bit heavier; that one took me closer to 3 or 4 hours to write. And of course I took breaks in between and even those 2 and 3 or 4 hour periods weren’t in perfect focus either.
I find that the reason I can’t really get into a flow is because I’m finding myself overthinking the potential of what I’m doing. In doing so, I do believe I start with a big picture…but that slowly gives way to the nuances of the piece and I find myself thinking:
“Oh…I should find a cool picture. Well, what comes to mind? Let me search the pictures available in UpSplash. Oh how’s about the Nautilus because of the Golden Ratio…hmmm that isn’t there. Let me find something on Google! Great got just what I wanted…”
I’ve not even finished this article and my mind is racing away trying to make it perfect already…
“Now let me put a cool subtitle under the picture. Now let me hyperlink my only two stories I’ve ever written so far on here as well.”
I’ve self-diagnosed myself as a perfectionist
This of course isn’t just with my writing here on Medium so far. This comes out in my emails at work, at how I want to complete Communication Block Diagrams on the Solar Projects I work on there, in how I want to communicate with others in and out of work, and in how I wanted to setup my LIFE!
And I’m learning that this is really detrimental to me, my progress and my health. I build up a picture of what I want and when I don’t achieve that perfect picture I crumble. Or equally as bad, I often don’t even get started on ideas I’ve had. This isn’t necessarily because I don’t know how to (though sometimes I just don’t). But it is because I want the perfect setup, the perfect conditions and right amount of experience prior to initiating my master plan and taking over the world with it.
A very clear example comes to mind: My pursuit at Music Recording
I’ve been playing Electric Guitar, Bass and Drums since I was a teenager and absolutely love it to this day. I typically wouldn’t learn covers but instead would jam and improvise and loop stuff in my head and via pedals I had. Often I’d jam with my brother and see my ideas take shape. So I’ve had this idea of just being a one man band and recording my songs in which I’d play everything, record everything, mix and master everything (and Likely on my own too…though that is another story).
I had all of the instruments, had software on my computer, had mics and an interface for the drums. But I didn’t quite have an interface for my guitar and bass and I didn’t quite have the perfect setting and time to do this in and I found that recording drums on my own was hard…and so what happened? NOTHING…NOTHING Happened. And now it is a few years later and it is a bit of a bummer that I don’t have something to show for all the idea’s and musical fantasies I had.
Instead of just going with the flow and accepting that having any kind of product was better than having no product, I built things up too high and simply couldn’t get to that level. I’m experiencing this in many aspects of my life right now and they’ve manifested in nasty things (again more stories on this later).
So what is the take away from this? What is MY take away from this?
Stop overthinking and just go with the flow in the moment. Be active rather than distractive. Stop looking towards the future for what the outcome should be and Just Do It (Fine…I’ll credit Nike with that one).
I mean, yes there is an aspect of looking back at what you’ve done and making tweaks here and there to ensure things are following some course…but those tweaks can’t be the project itself. Those tweaks are just tweaks.
Now, how to actually do this? When I figure that out or read enough advice from other Bloggers that work for me…maybe I’ll share that in a future post. For now this is just something I’m going to write down and continuously tell myself. Perhaps this action alone will embed in my psyche and will start working in my favor.
Final Note of Interest: I gave myself 30 minutes to write this after I spent a few minutes thinking about the title and my first few lines. I didn’t make 30 minutes, but I am in under an hour so far. Yes there were distractions, but they were mostly external ones (phone ringing and I answered, quick discussion with my mother). I didn’t have any distractions that I caused from within. And generally I flowed with the writing. When I sat down, I didn’t think about writing about my inactivity at recording music…it kind of just came to me.
So is this perfect? NO.
Am I content with that? YES Absolutely!
Is there potential I’ll revisit this post to get it closer to being perfect? Sure, maybe later. But at least I have something now!
Let me know what you guys think in the comments :)
Thanks,
— Igor
