I struggle with perfectionism.
It is a characteristic I’ve recently realized in myself that can have both positive or negative effects.
It can be a good thing—like in my job as a dental hygienist for example. That job requires skilled hands mastering the art of perfection removing bits and pieces of cement-like tartar off of people’s teeth without slicing up their gum tissue in the process. It requires steady hands when angling into a patient’s mouth with a needle to numb them for a procedure. It takes carefully spoken words of encouragement mixed with truth about a patients oral hygiene care to (hopefully) propel them to action to be more efficient in their home care, but also not de-motivate them by berating them for the lack thereof.
Yet it can also have detrimental negative effects.
Expecting too much from my children at their pre-school age level. Exhausting my energy as I try to keep up a perfectly clean and picked up house. Overly scrutinizing my writing—editing and editing and editing my articles—leaving them in my editing folder indefinitely.
There is a balance swing with perfectionism; I’m constantly seeking to find the middle ground.
Although I have let go of many of my perfectionism tendencies towards my children and the household, I hadn’t realized that they crept into my writing tendencies until recently—preventing me from sharing my words because I wanted to get them just right.
There is something to be said that great writing is not usually written on the first draft. It takes multiple drafts and edits in order to create a beautiful masterpiece of telling words and heart-felt pulls. Pick up any book and I guarantee you it was edited hundreds or thousands of times before it was bound nicely with a pretty publishing logo on it. Sometimes I have bursts of beautiful writing on my first go, and other times (most of the time) it requires much more energy and edits to craft my words just right.
I am still learning.
I’m learning how to let go of my perfectionism tendencies towards writing and in other categories of my life. Allow the purging of words bleeding onto paper first instead of trying to master them perfectly in the first go. Allow some imperfect pieces to be shared on this little blog because there may be something magically of essence to the words that are spoken its rawness which goes beyond the perfect grammatical’s.
I’m ready for November, a time where I seek to allow my writing to flow—more pieces on this blog to be shared—in hopes to encourage you in this process of refining and restoring your life to wholeness and beauty beyond skin deep.
Featured photo by Markus Spiske
Second photo by Carli Jean
