Forte. Più Forte. (Loud. More Loud.)

It’s come into my awareness again this week the fallacy of perfection, and its venomous tendrils. The three “p”s: Perfection, Procrastination, Paralyzation.

I’ve also read that procrastination is simply another way for us to prolong feeling crappy about ourselves, and to delay feeing proud of ourselves.

This week, after a conversation with some people of authority at work last week about my position, my ambition, my vision of “Where I’d like to be;” after I was given the feedback that, great, sure, put it in writing and we can talk more... I stalled and dragged my feet.

It wasn't acres of time, this time; it was only from Friday until Tuesday evening, when I finally wrote what I needed to write. But I could see those tendrils curling up around me, waiting to choke my ambition and self-esteem from me. The tendrils of hopelessness (What the use anyway), uncertainty (What about acting, my art, moving), and simple perfectionism (If it’s not perfect, they'll reject it, and then I’ll be stuck answering phones the rest of my life, anyway, so f* it, I’ll just watch some more Once Upon a Time).

It was so helpful to hear other people talk about how this weed of perfectionism crops up in their lives, marring their attempts at a full life—it reminds me that I’m not alone, and mostly, as I heard people talk about their struggle with perfectionism, I sat there in that chair and decided (for the hundredth time) to go home afterward and do the write-up I needed to hand in to my superiors.

I heard them battling the beast, I heard them being flayed by it, and I decided I wasn’t going to let that be me, if only for an evening.

I cannot tell you how many times I make this declaration to myself. And then, simply do come home and watch Netflix, or surf Facebook. I wonder if the advent of television and internet has created in us a generation of procrastinators, but I certainly know that I am none too helped by it! (in binges, especially)

But for whatever reason (and I won’t call it exasperation, because I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been exasperated, and still done nothing), I came home on Tuesday night, wrote what I needed to write, emailed it to a few friends for feedback, and handed it in yesterday.

And here’s the/a reward for overcoming perfectionism: It may not go the way you wanted anyway. I may hear, “Thanks, Molly, but we’re not in a position to… We’ll think about it for some undetermined date… This just isn’t in our vision or budget… We just need someone (you) to stay doing what you are doing indefinitely, or at least through the next year or more.” I may hear things I don’t want to hear in response to my action on behalf of myself and my ambition, BUT, the reward is that I get to hear something at all, instead of sitting, spinning, resenting, foaming, fuming, and … watching Netflix.

The reward for overcoming perfectionism (and it’s paralyzation) in just this one moment is that, no matter the results, no matter the response, I am actually moving forward, internally, for sure. What this does is tell me that, See Molly, once you did something. One time you took action on your own behalf, and instead of delaying your good, instead of languishing in a sea of self-pity, you get to feel proud, pro-active, like a leader. You get to feel like yourself, instead of like the skin of mutating fear that creeps up yours and mimics you out in the world.

I don’t know the result of the action I took, externally, at least. However, having put things in writing and gotten clarity around my vision and desire, if I don’t get the result I “want” here, in this environs, then I get to take that information and that knowledge and shop it around elsewhere. Because I took the action that I did, suddenly, I have a beginning instead of what my brain and that malevolent skin tells me is an end, a sorry, pathetic end.

Finally, I’ll repeat something I heard a long time ago, which I’ve agreed with and disagreed with over the years: We ask “god” for what we want; “he” gives us what we need; and in the end, it’s what we wanted anyway.

I know that what I wanted anyway was clarity and self-esteem, so, Team: Mission Accomplished.