Day 83: Perfectionism

This project has given me an interesting lens through which to view whatever streaks of perfectionism I may have.  I say it that way because I don't tend to think of myself as a perfectionist, and, looking at how I manage these posts, I'm beginning to understand why.

So, first off, I was going to write and say that I've had to learn to, to at least some degree, shoot from the hip.  I write something and let it go, on a pretty quick turnaround.  I definitely reread and edit, but I don't spend hours on these posts (as if you couldn't tell).  So, in that sense, I've had to let go of any desire I might have to polish and re-polish. 

I have also posted a whole lot of really trivial stuff.  This is in keeping with my stated goal, and it has definitely loosened me up a lot.  Thinking about Disco's coat?  Write about it.  Noticing that I tend to trick myself into swimming laps in sets?  Write about it.  Feel stupid for posting something that seems stupid?  Post it anyway.

So, you could say that, in those ways, doing this has helped me to relax my grip on things a little bit, or maybe even a lot.  (Because dudes, there have been a lot of trivial posts over the past nearly three months.)

But, I realized as I went to write this post, to a very significant degree, those are places where I already had a fairly gentle grip on perfectionist tendencies.  Which is why I felt able to say that bit, up in the first paragraph, about not being much of a perfectionist.

Except.

Except then I thought about all of the posts I haven't written.  The posts that I think about for hours, sometimes, about the topics that are really capturing my heart and mind right now.  The posts that I really want to get perfect - to get right - before I put them out there.  The posts that I am so worried about getting perfect that I never even start to write them.

Oops.  And dammit.  And also, interesting.

Day 18: Making meaning

“For those of you accustomed to being taken from point A to point B to point C, this presentation may be somewhat difficult to follow. Pueblo expression resembles something like a spider’s web – with many little threads radiating from the centre, crisscrossing one another. As with the web, the structure emerges as it is made, and you must simply listen and trust, as the Pueblo people do, that meaning will be made."  
          - Leslie Marmon Silko


I was reading something written by a friend of mine, and she included this quote, and it just hit me in all the right places - so I thought I'd share.  It made me think of what I wrote yesterday, about not really knowing what themes would come up, but seeing that they are beginning to arise, and trusting that they will make sense.  That meaning will be made.  

And boy howdy, does this make me think of so much of my life.  Where I struggle through whatever is happening (usually a whole lot of whatevers all at once, and why does it work that way?), and what it all means is an ever-present question without much of an answer, except for the persistent sense that it does mean something if I can just hang on long enough to figure out what it is.

And then it speaks to the meaning-making part of my mind.  And, I think, of the minds of all humans (and probably other animals, too).  That we seek out patterns.  This is how epistemologies arise - we observe, we patiently listen and watch, and we trust that out of what appears at first to be structureless, unconnected bits and pieces, like magic - like a spider's web - meaning will be made.  I love that we are implicated in the meaning making. And I try to be respectful of the fact that we are implicated in the meaning making, because it suggests that each of us may make different meanings out of similar events - not because one of us has it right while others are viewing the world mistakenly, but because we are each part of the meaning-making process.  And that is something to respect and celebrate at the same time.