Perils of Perfectionism

When people ask me if I’ve been writing lately, I mumble something about not having time because of the demands of a job, children and home. That’s a much easier answer than the truth, which is that I suffer from the debilitating, paralyzing disease of perfectionism. Perfectionism is not so much the desire to be perfect as it is the fear of failure. What if I write something controversial, or make a grammatical mistake and I’m an English teacher? Even “worser” than worse, what if I write something so utterly uninteresting that people say, “who cares”? It’s unfortunate because I write such interesting, wonderful blogs in my head and I come up with really amazing story lines that never see the light of day.

Perfectionism is such a sad, mentally incapacitating disease because it can prevent us from achieving things that we’re entirely capable of achieving. The cure? Take chances. No-one is perfect and everyone makes a grammatical mistake once in awhile. So what if something is controversial? What’s the worse that can happen?

This year, I’m fighting perfectionism. The alternative is to sit at the computer, fingers frozen on the keyboards, eyes staring at the blank page, until I finally shut the computer, shove it under the bed, and succumb to a Netflix addiction followed by sleep. That way I bury the unhappiness that comes from a creative person who is not being creative because of fear of failure.