Stop trying to perfect!!

For years I had thought about making some YouTube videos and writing a blog. I would dabble in the idea, create something and then I would stop. 

Why?

Because I would tell myself I was not ready yet and that I needed to work on my stuff to get it right before sharing it.

I needed it to be perfect. 

I would then put it all away, box it off and ignore it for another year or so until I needed to scratch that creative itch again.

Then out it would all come again… and the doubt would close in again.

Rinse and repeat.

Boxed and ignored.

Rinse and repeat.

But now, I am creating videos and blog posts. Now I have momentum, and I don’t feel like stopping and boxing off my passions. 

Nope, not this time. This time I am running with what I want to do, and I am going with it. 

The difference this time is that I identified what my need for perfection was. It was never a need for perfection. It was fear. The use of the word perfection was masking the real reason – FEAR.

Neil Gaiman talks about it in his famous commencement speech, that fear “that any moment now they will discover you.” It holds so many people back. It wastes so much time. As if anyone is thinking about discovering you. No, they’re thinking about themselves!

Neil Gaiman

I was fearful of failing, of having people laugh or ridicule me and say the words that would play over in my head… as if they were real and coming from the doubters.

“Who the feck do you think you are?”

I still tell myself that. I still have these doubts rising up from inside. But I ignore them, and the voice that carries the sentence is depleted to a whisper now because it knows I hear it for what it is. 

A big fat nothing with a capitol ‘0’

It is just noise. Like the real doubters. The people that leave negative comments or have a dig for the sake of mugging you off. I frame it all as just a nothing crescendo of friggin noise and move on with creating my stuff.

There is one thing I have learned over the past year: that everyone has an opinion. I believe firmly that you should have that freedom, and you should be allowed to say what you want as long as it is not breaking any common decency or racist rules. 

You are welcome to have your precious opinion, and I can have my precious ignorance to your opinion.

I am welcome to that because I earned it, how did you earn yours? (winky eye emoji goes here)

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