Perfectionism
I am much too familiar with perfectionism. It’s sneaky.
A couple of years ago I was doing a workshop called “The Inside Game” that explored your acting career from a quantum physics perspective or something like that – I can never remember the name. But we were discussing how everything in life rises with its opposite, so you have to be careful what you are putting energy into. I asked what the opposite of perfectionism was, and the teacher paused for a moment and then said “love.” I burst out into a laugh. I was floored by the idea that my perfectionism was preventing me from loving myself. I always felt like by perfecting myself I was achieving something. I was reaching an ideal. I guess I was trying to make myself love-able.
It feels like a paradox because I love honest, messy, gritty conversation and art. Fleabag is one of my favorite television shows of all time. And yet, I don’t view it as messy or raw because she still somehow wrapped it up into a perfect piece of art. What’s terrifying to me is that other people might view my ART or my CAREER as messy or imperfect. Because it is. I’m not where I wanted to be nor feel I should be and I’m not sure how I’m going to get to a place that feels or looks complete or tied up in a pretty bow. Someday when I get to tell my story on Late Night or in a memoir, it will be messy. I’ll have to do some work to believe that it all happened as it should have.
I’m sure perfectionism halts me from working on my writing projects – I know the core of the story, I know the characters, but I don’t know how to END it. I don’t know how to tie it up into a bow. And that fear of not getting it right or it not looking or feeling how I want it to can be crippling and stop me from even starting sometimes.
I even feel I have a perfectionist’s relationship to time. I want to have an entire day to dive into creative projects because an hour barely feels like enough time to sink into the zone. And if I don’t have the amount of time that I want, I just don’t even use the time that I DO have. The time and space isn’t good enough for me to get into my creative space. I hate the idea of 10 minutes a day, or 30 minutes a day to work on something. The switching focus is so difficult. I never get to feel like I’m on a roll or in the zone.
