POORLY PERFORMING PERFECTIONIST

Hi 👋 Welcome to my blog.

Throughout my life I have had friends stop mid-conversation and say, "You're kind'ove a perfectionist, aren't you?" It was surprising every time. I mean, I can't be a perfectionist - don't those people do things perfectly? I would say I'm doing an average to slightly above average job most of the time. Perfectionists make cute little bento boxes for their kids while deftly climbing the corporate ladder with perfectly tweezed eyebrows and winged eyeliner. My desire for everything to be perfect cannot be what makes me a perfectionist. I'm just a wannabe perfectionist and have been for as long as I can recall.

Cut to eight years ago (it could have been ten or maybe fifteen), I was watching Brene Brown's first TED talk online and stopped dead when she said, "Perfectionism is a twenty ton shield". It felt way too honest and I felt way too seen. Apparently people trying to make things perfect to protect themselves is enough to be called out as perfectionists. So maybe I am a bit of perfectionist after all and rather than trying to deny my nature, maybe it is okay to be striving to be bad at it. This is me working on lowering my shield, leaning into being a poorly performing perfectionist and embracing it.

Thanks for reading.

P.S. I spent way too long writing this when I should be sleeping