Please raise your hand if you’re a recovering perfectionist …
Oh. Okay. Really?
Just me…
… Um okay well, I think you should still read this.
Hi my name is pronounced Lisa Flour, but I spell it Lysa Flower.
I’m a recovering perfectionist.
Perfectionism is sneaky. I’m not even sure how I became a perfectionist. I’ll assume it was childhood junk and blame it on my parents, which is always a tried and true place to start.
That probably doesn’t even matter. The part that matters is that it’s sneaky. It slides in with greaser hair. Think John Travolta-ish, yeah, like that, all cool and collected. Now that you have the “tell me, more, tell me more”, earworm lodged in your brain for the rest of the day.
You’re welcome… wait… What was I talking about?
Oh right, perfectionism. You might think it’s under control then all of a sudden you find yourself not sketching or drawing or creating because of anticipating that, “Wow. This is HOT GARBAGE” feeling.
Which I think feels similar to rejection sensitivity (a new ADHD word I learned and also explains a lot of my motivation behind avoiding the UGLY).
Oh? Really? Just me again? Okay…
But I really think you should keep reading.
So there I was alone in this big, bad world, the only one dreading the hot garbage feeling until someone exasperated in listening again about my sad routine and diatribe about how I couldn’t figure out why I wasn’t making more work said:
“You just have to make work. Do it for 1 hour and text me a photo when you’re done.” (Gah! added my brain!)
blink*blink*blink
Um, okay, you don’t have to yell.
So I did it. Right away I hated it, hot garbage coming through… but then…
It wasn’t so bad. I mean, it was BAD but the feeling didn’t last forever. Maybe because I had no expectation of it being anything? I was just sitting down for an hour to stop my friend from rolling their eyes at me for being such a baby (their words, not mine, even if it was only implied by my brain).
Then I did it the next day.
… and the next.
… and then little pockets of fun-ness started to happen smack dab in the middle of all that ugly. They were little. Tiny. Most people probably couldn’t even see the good stuff by how loud the ugly was.
… but I saw it.
make ugly
〰️
make ugly 〰️
even if there is a big harold cat butt in the way
〰️
even if there is a big harold cat butt in the way 〰️
And I started to search for it everyday.
Then I started to look forward to it each day.
The end.
Wow, that seemed abrupt.
Maybe we should challenge people to do the same?
We could BUT do you ever do the challenges at the end of posts?!
Hmm, you’ve got a point.
Okay, how about this?… I’m going to do a week starting today, 15 mins of on purpose ugly, if you’d like to join me, that would be snazzy.
Ugliest wins!
No, this isn’t a competition!
It’s not?
For god sakes, NO!
Well what’s the point then?!
Just go and make something you dumb-dumb.
Hey, no name calling!
Fine! Just show them some photos of your ugly.
Fine! But there’s a big cat butt in most of them.
IT’S FINE! What are you a perfectionist?!
