No One Told Me I was a Perfectionist

If I never reached my own expectations how could I possibly be a perfectionist?

In high school, my friends seemed to fall into two groups: perfectionists and non-perfectionists aka slackers. Despite publishing a zine with interviews from some pretty major bands, playing varsity sports, working two jobs, and volunteering feeding the homeless and advocating for animal rights, I was a slacker. Obviously. Because my zine wasn't a full-blown glossy magazine with an office and staff, my grades were pretty sub-par (probably because I was overworked and under-diagnosed), and I wasn't the high scorer on my teams or an MVP, I was basically a failure with bad hair.

Some things I kept at because I felt like I was good at them even if no one recognized it yet, but others I had so much self-judgment I dropped them, or self sabotaged, or grew bored quickly with no high of succes to ride.

This pattern followed for years and manifested in essentially all aspects of life.

A couple months ago, my sweetie and I were playing a couples game a bit like the Newlyweds Game, answering questions about one another. Sweetie's answer about my dreams for the future were poignant, flattering, and I cried for reasons I only partially understood. A few weeks later, another crack in the facade emerged when a visiting friend and I were discussing our respective divorces. "I just figured it was because you're such a driven and successful woman with a clear vision for your future and he couldn't keep up." What? How could she see that? Was it true?

These two people — one who knows me so well and another who knows me rather peripherally — both had an idea of me as a successful person who had her shit together, and meanwhile in my head I saw someone barely keeping it together and barely trying to.

Two weeks ago I turned 44. A week into my 45th year (so... last week for you math whizzes), I was doing some work and it suddenly dawned on me: I'm a perfectionist.

It had never occurred to me because I have (almost) never been proud of myself, have never been satisfied with the results, have never finished and said, "yes, this is perfect, and I have put in the appropriate amount of effort to reach this level of success."

Nevermind how this has negatively impacted me as a human being; as a writer this mentality has devastating consequences. The rejected manuscripts (plural) sitting in a folder, rejected a few times and edited to oblivion, the projects that never launched because they weren't already completed and successful, the half-written books or story ideas that didn't get finished or workshopped because I didn't reach the unreasonable expectations I know are unfair and impossible — it's the very thing I teach classes on, I was just so hard on myself that I couldn't see just how deep into that mentality I'd gotten.

As I've said a few times now, growing older is such a gift. I don't really believe in the saying, youth is wasted on the young. I am happy to have lived so many lives when I was younger, been such a rascal at different points in time, and had so many wild adventures that by now in my middle age I don't have the patience or energy for. My life is such a story in itself! If only I had seen it for the perfection that it was when I was living it. I probably would have sent my stories to publications that paid rather than putting them on my Myspace blog or Livejournal. More importantly, in the years since, I wouldn't have treated those stories with such disrespect, a perfectionist judging a perfectionist for not fitting an unformed standard.

Ask yourself: What are you being a bit too hard on yourself about? What is, by everyone else's standards, exemplary but you are still picking at like a blackhead, boring into your face rather than just letting an indistinguishable "blemish" in your writing be... at the very least, until an editor invites you to collaborate on changes?

If you are looking for a community to bounce ideas off, to get a vibe check before you edit yourself to oblivion or give up on a great idea just because it isn't already perfect, sign up for the Forward Motion Writing Club today. We are a small but growing community of diverse and dedicated writers, setting goals and holding one another accountable to dreams, rather than letting them fall apart in the shadows of self-criticism and other obligations pretending they are more important.