Creature Comforts N°6

A sporadic Sunday newsletter to replenish and reset yourself for the week ahead—from your Guardian Angel of the Lagoon.

Photo by Jack Prommel on Unsplash

*crawls out from behind a rock* Hiiiiiiiieee! How are you? Sorry I missed a few weeks of this newsletter. I almost abandoned it entirely due to discouraging self-doubt. Then I pulled my head outta my ass and remembered the power of perseverance! So I missed a few weeks—it’s not the end of the world. Failure is part of the journey. Messing up is inevitable, and that’s what I’d like to remind you about this week.

Cliché du jour: progress over perfection.

Ever since I was a wee lass, I’ve been a perfectionist. It’s an involuntary tendency that eventually becomes a heady barrier to fully experiencing all life has to offer. I’d tell myself it has to be done perfectly or it’s not worth doing at all. WRONG! This sadistic philosophy seeped into all veins of my life, both positively and negatively, eventually becoming a crystalized part of my personality. I sought perfection in school (+) and art (-), as a daughter (-) and girlfriend (-), as a nanny (+ for the family, - for my mental health), and most of all as a friend (very -).

Photo by Matthew Moloney on Unsplash

Nobody’s perfect in this life of sin, so of course, I failed myself regularly. Oftentimes, the pendulum would swing from extreme perfection to nihilism—the auld “who cares? life is meaningless” chestnut. If I failed a friend, I’d tell myself maybe I didn’t deserve a that friend. Maybe it wasn’t meant to be. Maybe I’m a loser. Sounds dramatic but you’d be shocked how cruel one’s own thoughts can become in the privacy of our own minds.

This all or nothing thinking is a recipe for disaster at worst, and stagnation at best—both of which are much worse than mediocrity. There’s nothing wrong with being mediocre.

“Mediocrity rules man, mediocrity rules.”—Le Tigre

Photo by Jakob Cotton on Unsplash

It’s better to mess up and keep trying than it is to mess up, agonize over the flub, and then quit. This goes for sobriety and/or drinking less, work, family, friends, writing, painting, school, etc. Essentially…EVERYTHING! In fact, if you aren’t messing up a little then you aren’t living hard enough.

With that in mind, I’m changing this newsletter from being a weekly publication to a “sporadic” publication. That’s what works for me. Think of it as an unexpected surprise whenever it arrives!

Photo by Micaela Parente on Unsplash

On this week’s menu:

• Do something you’ve been hesitating on. Whether you’ve been waiting to wear those metallic cowgirl boots or to submit a vulnerable piece of writing for publication—this week, I challenge you to do it. Who cares if you’re overdressed? Who cares if your writing gets rejected? The value is in the vulnerability. You’re putting yourself out there and that’s growth.

• Writing prompt: Do you have any perfectionist tendencies? If so, how and where to they manifest in your life? If not, what’s your relationship with vulnerability? In what ways do you hold back when you secretly desire to shine?

• Start a thing without putting any pressure on yourself to finish it. This can take shape in many ways, depending on your personality and what’s available to you. It could be knitting, watercolor, writing a poem, cracking open a dauntingly enormous book, organizing your closet, purging crap in the garage, writing a letter to your future self, getting a sourdough starter, making a blog post, etc. Start something, anything. Just start!

XX—CZ