A victory over perfectionism
Recently I wrote about how I was getting back on track after another cycle of sabotage. You see, I’ve battled severe perfectionism and mental health issues for the better part of 20 years and it’s kept me very isolated.
However, recently I’ve been through a lot of transformation in my life. During this latest period of isolation I was dealing with some very intense personal and professional change.
For about 5 months in 2021, I didn’t write or share any content. It was hard enough to make it through each day.
This period was difficult, but also was an important and necessary period of growth in my life, following the death of my father last year.
It felt akin to some type of ego-death where my life did a 180 and I was confronted with the fact that everything I thought was meaningful turned out to be a lie.
I have now accepted it and transformed my sense of self-worth due to this episode. With that I’m beginning to revisit my journey of creation and artistic expression.
Just yesterday I wrote, produced and performed this song called, “Back On Track”, and posted it to Youtube.
On the surface it may not seem like much, you've probably seen thousands of videos of bedroom musicians posting clips all over social media.
However, for me to be able to post this, was a monumental achievement.
Let me explain why...
Freedom from expectation
For the first time in my life I didn’t have an expectation or desire for plays and views (or really any outcomes in general) when posting a video.
In the past when I would share content, intellectually I would try to convince myself that I was outcome independent but in reality because I was stuck in a pit totally attached to the outcomes and would go through a period of self-hatred and self-loathing every project.
Efficiency
Historically, I would obsessively do things over and over again because things weren’t “good enough.”
At best, this would delay me weeks and months for every project and at worst my perfectionism was so bad I wouldn’t even start new things because I knew how hard it was going to be to finish.
For this video I recorded the take in about 15 minutes and was okay with the first one I finished all the way through.
The old me would have never allowed it to happen instead I would have lost passion and quit the project.
Authenticity
In this video I’m playing the guitar 100% live with zero punch-ins, edits or video tricks. A little secret about guitar videos (especially Instagram and Youtube videos) is that many players are miming to a prerecorded track.
The appeal of this is that guitar playing sounds “perfect” and polished just like in the studio because they can edit to their hearts desires. The old me would have been drawn to that to the perfect presentation. This is my first video where there were zero guitar edits. This is truly live and real.
I’m happy to say I’ve never been prouder of putting a video out.
In the past I tried to be exceptional or special in some way so that I could be seen. It was the shattered, perfectionist voice inside of me that yearned for validation.
Now I’m fine just creating and not worrying about being “good enough” and achieving anyone’s bar of expectation. Instead, I’m just creating freely, so it doesn’t matter how it sounds.
It’s a long war with many battles still to come, but at least in this battle with perfectionism, I won.
