Unattainable Perfection

When I was in college, I had a professor who required us to keep notes in our lab book in pen. I was a freshman with yet-undiagnosed OCD. I'd always been particular about my writing, handwriting that had to be neat, lines that had to be just-so. The notebook was a graph-paper composition notebook, and if we made a mistake, we were to use white-out or simply cross out the error and write the correction next to it.

In a light-leaf notebook, if you use white-out you can see the error through the page on the back. And I don't do cross-outs. (At least, I didn't then.) As the semester continued, I refused to write anything in my notebook, writing everything on looseleaf paper separate from my notebook until it had to be copied in for review by the professor. Then, following a mistake I detected on page 20, I bought a new notebook... and spent six hours in the dining hall recopying my notebook in pristine handwriting, all in the same pen.

Cue the OCD diagnosis. (Thank God for those who have helped me find tolerance for errors. Having children beat it out of me, too.)

So as I'm practicing my letters, I asked my instructor, "What's the balance between 'every letter needs to be perfect' and 'the job needs to get done and the letter is kosher, moving on'?"

So says my instructor, "You need to let go of perfectionism. If we wait until each letter is perfect, we'll never get anything done. There's always something to be improved about each letter. The more you do, the better and more consistent your writing will get."

My Internal Critic---let's call him the Obsessive Critique Demon (OCD)--looks at the picture above and goes, "Those aren't my best letters. That's not my best writing. Don't post that picture." But the Obsessive Critique Demon also runs the risk of paralyzing me from getting anything done, or trusting myself to produce actual work for anyone.

Sometimes, compassionately, I can recognize that the Obsessive Critique Demon is really just my Overly-Cautious Defender. If I can remind him that it's safe to move ahead, and/or that we really have no other choice (unless we want to stay here, which we don't).

Recognizing this is the first post in a new blog about scribal projects, here's where I throw down my gauntlet against my Obsessive Critique Demon. We do the Thing. Because doing the Thing is better than not doing the Thing, even if it's scary to do the Thing. And in doing so, we will find improvement and consistency. In writing as in music, there's no way to create muscle memory but practice moving your own muscles.