Being Perfect is Boring

As a child, I had been praised for doing good work and reprimanded when I did omething bad. It made me afraid to make mistakes thus I only focus on things that I know I can do. I stopped being the curious child I was.

Remembering my childhood days bring so much unpleasant memory. I was an outcast. The girl who has to sit alone during breaks. The one whose friends backstab and bully in front of others.

The cruelty I experienced made me more focus on just doing my best in academics. Still, I keep up my Ms. Perfect persona, making the teacher like how polite I was which in turn would lead to more bullying.

Being perfect means being friendly, but strict. I was the one who is assigned on listing the noisy students and even my so-called friends are listed if they are noisy. It means being approachable but aloof. My classmates can ask me a question and I will answer it as if it was the easiest thing in the world; as if I did not lose sleep over thinking the right answer.

Being perfect means not experiementinf because that means a tendency for failures, and failing is not perfection. So I learned how to read fast, and how to remember them. I learned how to smile and to make myself small. I learned how to be a wallflower but also learned how to prove them wrong.

I learned that being perfect is boring. There is no room for improvement in a world striving for perfection. There is no space for satisfaction. There is only the feeling of wanting more, needing it to be perfect.

A 99% is no good, only a 100% will do. It does not matter if it makes me lose my mind, what matters is that I am perfect in their eyes.

This all happened when I was in elementary. I still remember the taste of ash when I graduated as the Salutatorian. "The first loser", I would call it in my mind. If it was not first I did not like it.

Encountering mental block when I was in front of every students, teachers, and parents almost made me cry then and there. However, I managed to get through it, proving that I know what I was going to say.

Still, in that moment, as my fellow students laugh at me, something in me clicks. Upholding the Ms. Perfect persona I had made every mistake I do looks bigger than it was. It gives ammunition to people wanting to hurt me.

Since then, I learned how to be average. This is a mostly successful journey.

Instead of reading my notes and lessons, I read fictions. Instead of doing my homeworks, I focus on resting; I cram my assignments in school. There is not a sign of Ms. Perfect in me when I enteted high school.

It worked well even if it did not eliminate the elitism that bleeds into me, encouraged by the school. Washing my hands clean of being Ms. Perfect made my high school bearable.

Of course, perfectionism is not something that goes away immediately. This time, instead of in academics, I wanted to be perfect in art.

I never share an artwork unless it looks great, not just good but better than my last one. I drove myself to the ground trying to make it all look perfect.

This is something that I have just realized lately. I am always eager to share good artworks with my friends in noise.cash but I never want to post the process because it did not look as perfect.

This is one example. I shared this one in noise.cash knowing that it looks good, and just sharing that it is something that I am proud of.

What I mever shared is that this particular piece made me want to vomit so much when I was working on it because I was so anxious in making every details look good.

There was bo enjoyment in the process, only in the outcome. If it had not turn out the way it did, I would have beaten myself over it.

When I posted it I remember making a kind of upbeat caption, as if working on it brings me great relief after stressing myself over schoolworks. However, the truth is that instead of relieving my stress, it adds on it.

I was more concerned on it being perfect than anything else. The fact that this piece of artwork is the "best" one I made so far when I posted it, made the bar I set to myself too high.

I think the next few artworks I shared are of similar quality like this one. I never feel safe sharing something else that did not look as good, even if it was just some practice sketch.

However, I worked on it. I started small like when I worked hard to throw away my Ms. Perfect in academics during high school.

I started small. I shared articles here at read.cash about what my progress looked like. I shared some tolerable artworks from the past.

Then now, I am posting WIPs that I will never finish because most of them did not turn out as I wanted them too.

This is a practice of using my fingers again in drawing. I wanted to see if I still have it in me and I am glad to ser that this is the result.

Compared to the past artworks I shared, it might seem like the quality decreased. Yes, it does when it is compared to the ones I made using my laptop and pen tablet. However, this is the best one I made using my fingers.

And then we have this. This is a 3-minute sketch, I scrapped the bottom layer full of my messy sketch and posted just this "clean" sketch.

Does it look perfect? Gosh, no.

Did I have fun doing it? Absolutely.

Still, this experience taught me that my past definition of perfect is boring. I don't want to create something that looks too good to be true. I want to create something relatable.

I want to be able to create things that makes me enjoy the process instead of worrying over the outcome. I think being able to be happy at where I am right now my new definition of perfect. And that is not a boring one.

If you want to read more of my articles, I have made a list of all the past articles I published to make it easier for you to find one that might catch your interest.

Here is the link to my past articles summary:  https://read.cash/@ZehraSky/week-1-june-2021-articles-summary-6e15cf71

These are the links to the art progress articles I mentioned.:

https://read.cash/@ZehraSky/look-into-my-past-artworks-pt-1-c59a6f43

https://read.cash/@ZehraSky/look-into-my-past-artworks-pt-2-ce67d99b

https://read.cash/@ZehraSky/look-into-my-past-artworks-pt-3-b9bf4629

Thank you for reading!