Perfection

I’m not a perfectionist. Doing the number of things I do each week, it’d be impossible for me to be anything less than miserable if I were.

For the longest time, I’d feel shitty about not being able to speak more than two languages fluently. It might sound stupid to someone who doesn’t speak any foreign languages, but I grew up bilingual, mostly. My parents have always spoken French and Turkish to me. I’ve studied many languages. By the time I came to the United States, I had studied German, English and Italian in some form or another. I’ve never officially studied French, though, and after I came here, each time I brought up the subject of taking Italian, my dad would say that I should first learn French. He figured if I couldn’t speak it perfectly, it doesn’t count. For the longest time, I agreed with him. Even though I’d already started learning sign language, I felt frustrated and didn’t know which language to concentrate on first.

And then I went to Japan. I started learning Japanese and I loved it. I also decided it was better to speak seven languages half-assed than to speak three perfectly. So now, I study a language for as long as it’s fun and I don’t worry about how well or, not well, I speak it. I’ll take more French classes when I’m good and ready, dammit!

Talking to my friend, Cheryl, tonight, I realized that I categorize the things I do into two categories: ones where I am a perfectionist and ones where I’m not.

I’m a perfectionist at my job. I try to give it one thousand percent. I figure since it’s my main field, I should be the best at it that I can be.

I’m a perfectionist with my relationships. With my family and Jake and even my friends, I try really hard and beat myself up when things go wrong.

I’m a perfectionist with school. I work hard and attend all my classes. I spend umpteen hours studying to get a good grade. But mostly to learn.

But there’s a long list of things where I don’t feel the need to be a perfectionist. I feel it’s okay for me not to be flawless with the saxophone, even though my teacher would claim otherwise. Actually, I don’t feel the need to be perfect at most arts, like design, drawing, and architecture.

Okay, maybe not that long.

About two years ago, I decided to take up writing. And I’ve struggled since day one. I continuously thought that I sucked and the act gave me about equal amounts of grief and pleasure. I kept agonizing. I kept stopping and restarting.

Tonight I realized why.

Being an okay writer isn’t fine with me. I want perfection.

And, unfortunately, there’s no shortcut to perfection.

Previously? Introvert.