on doing things the hard way

& how imperfection makes us human

If you’ve been around me lately, you’ve heard me wax poetic about how therapy has changed my brain. I’ve been doing EMDR for the last year, and sorting through a lot of old trauma.

A weird byproduct of this has been the reduction of of my analysis paralysis.

Really.

I won’t go into too many details, but essentially, I was overanalyzing situations that didn’t need to be analyzed because I had a longstanding fear of failure. Other perfectionists might relate.

Life now been incredibly odd. I almost feel like a different person, but I’ve been telling myself that I am who I was the whole time, but not hidden by my trauma responses. I find myself just doing things without hesitation. I used to have to talk myself out of bed, rationalizing and rebutting my thoughts, rather than just getting up and doing the task that I was worrying about.

Okay, I can’t get out of bed until I decide what I’m going to do. I should empty the dishwasher. I should take a shower. I should brush my teeth right away before I eat.

a pic i took of some daisies because i was actually able to get my ass out of bed one morning and didn’t overthink going outside

I was afraid of doing things in an inefficient order, or doing things “wrong”, and having to deal with the consequences. I couldn’t commit to an action.

When feeling overwhelmed by any task, I would have to sit through all of the thoughts and let them happen, and it would take forever. There was no snapping myself out it. The only way forward was through.

This newsletter has been a longstanding victim of this paralysis. Writing for me in general, really. I was (am still a bit) afraid of putting something out there that was less than perfect. Afraid of people reading things that I had written, and making a lasting impression on them that my writing was shit, and would be shit forever, and they would never give me a chance again.

And it was so tiring!!! I would get so tired at the end of the day because each decision took so much cognitive effort. Every small decision was very important. Deciding what I wanted to eat was a very important decision, because there were so many factors that I had to consider. The right balance of protein, carbs. Was I eating enough vegetables? I was thinking everything through instead of relying on the data from my body. It’s like I had decided to narrate and argue with every data point from my body, and if it didn’t make sense, it couldn’t be done.

I couldn’t just try and fail. Try, fail, reiterate. My fear of doing something wrong was exhausting. If I wrote something and was unhappy with it, I couldn’t see that I could revise it. It was just wrong.

I feel like after sorting through my brain with EMDR, I became more cognizant about what situations actually require me to be on high alert, and when a situation aren’t a big deal.

does technology cause perfectionism?

I recently realized that typing on a computer removed much of the joy for me. The carefreeness of it all. Typing makes me feel like I am a business girl. I am a professional. Everything must be clear. Grammatically correct. Boo, artistic license.

The mere fact of having everything be fixable on a computer, makes me feel like I should fix any error that I have. Just backspace, and it’s like your mistake never existed. Writing in longhand got rid of that for me. The illusion of things having to be perfect is gone, because nothing can be perfect when writing with pen and paper. You have to commit to your mistakes. If you accidentally write down the wrong word, you have to cross it out or commit to keeping that word.

some writing that i didn’t feel like was right. looking back, it’s not so bad now! if i had written it on a computer, it would have been lost forever.

Letting go of efficiency has been freeing. Who cares if writing on a computer is faster? Have I ever considered whether faster is better? When I write on a computer, I end up with just a whole bunch more words that I have to sort through.

I was also removing the joy of writing that happens when you just let things happen. When you start writing down everything that relates to the subject that you thought about, and letting go of the plan.

Putting everything that brings you joy down about the subject, following where your mind takes you and shaping it after.

I was skipping that part.

There was no whimsy in my writing.

There was only serious writing. Carefully planned sections. One paragraph on this topic. Elaborate on the topic for two more paragraphs. Insert one witty remark, but not too many, or it will feel like a fluff piece.

Fuck that. I can add as many exclamation points, commas, periods, witty remarks, weird metaphors, long sentences, or lengthy paragraphs as I want.

The problem with today is that everything makes too much sense.

Everything is too logical. Too efficient.

imperfection is more enriching than perfection

I didn’t realize how much I missed imperfections, and how beautiful imperfections are. How your mind gets tickled when something that is unexpected happens. Novel things.

I realized I shouldn’t care so much if my clothes have wrinkles, or if my outfits are a little mismatched. I don’t need to have a clear structure in my notebooks, and I should be able to cross out whole pages. I don’t need an efficient system for everything, I can just do things inefficiently.

I’ve started browsing the indie web lately, and honestly it’s been so refreshing. Sure. The 90’s nostalgia hits hard for me. But also just how bad everything is!! divs uncentered. Mismatched text. Colours that are so bright. The life shines right through!! The joy!! The indie web allows people to do this. Rather than these hyper-efficient applications that do everything for you, and have had every path that a user could possibly take mapped out. As a software developer, I know how much thought goes into making sure that the user has the easiest experience possible. Because we know that when there is too much friction, the user will abandon your application. We know that if a website doesn’t load in 3 seconds, most users will give up.

We are cursed now with everything having to look good. When Instagram first came out, we were all amateur photographers and we didn’t expect anything better from anyone else, because most people weren’t photographers. So Instagram felt more human because it wasn’t all the same “professional” level shit being given to us, because taking photos wasn’t easy so we all had varying skill levels, and there was grace so that nothing had to look perfect. Now with all of the filters, and all of the ways to tweak your photos, and all of the brands and influencers on the platform, the standard is significantly higher, so most content will fall short unless one puts in a lot more effort.

I even have a hard time here on Substack to be honest. We all have access to the same editor, everyone’s websites look professional in a way, and it makes me afraid to fail. What if mine doesn’t look like that? The quirk has to be added afterwards intentionally, rather than already being exposed in the process. When we have to do things the hard way, do things ourselves, then the human part of us gets infused naturally. When things are done through an editor, something gets sanitized there.

imperfection reminds us that we’re human

I want to be reminded how alive I am in this depressing world. I want to see people’s weird interests and quirks. Not everything has to have structure.

I just want to see people be bad at things.

I want to be bad at things. I want to fail. I want to feel joy and do whatever the fuck I want.

me embracing imperfection meant re-using vases as holders for my things. baby steps.

And what does that say to me? What message am I learning?

By looking at this shit, I think - there’s no joy in the world. People are lifeless. Everyone is boring. There’s no hope. When I try to use the apps, I’m boring. I can’t do this. There’s no life in me. No joy.

When I do human things the analog way, my expectations are better. I see my humanness, and I think it’s beautiful. I make a weird drawing that’s totally not proportionate at all, but it has pretty colours, and I got to use markers that I really like.

When I make art on the internet, in a highly sanitized space, I think that there’s something wrong with me because I can’t get something pixel perfect. Because there is an infinite amount of possibility on the internet. maybe there’s a font that I didn’t see yet that will fit this perfectly. maybe there’s an image that i haven’t found yet.

In a perfect world, I could be as inconvenient as I wanted. I could just upload word documents to my website, and people could just download my writing or something. I could just start writing my newsletter by long hand and posting it that way, so that I wouldn’t have to be plagued with picking the perfect pictures and the perfect captions that are witty enough, and match the background of my substack page. But here we are. It’s not perfect, but I’m doing it.

---

& an update from me…

to be nice to myself, I am committing myself to writing this newsletter bi-weekly. one will be a monthly reads roundup (unless I change my mind lol), and the other will be a personal essay like this one. hope y’all keep reading! if you like what i’m writing, please share & subscribe :)