perfect essay for perfect people

Does this intro feel right? Will the word I use be the right one? Does it convey my ideas well enough? Are my ideas even 'right' in the first place? Ugh, this isn't right. Best to just scrap this sentence---and the one before it too, for good measure. Screw it, let's just rewrite the whole paragraph. It was all messed up anyways. This retry'll surely be better. I want it to look better. It has to look better. One word...

...then two, then ten....

[backspace, backspace, backspace]

...and then back to zero.

Eons have passed. There, one paragraph down, maybe 6 more to go. Ok, now what do I do for the next one? I could've sworn I had a great idea for this one---but now it doesn't look as good when in front of keyboard. And I'll have to think of a transition too...

That's usually how I write my blog posts. Not just my essays, those horrifying things sent to colleges, but blog posts. 650 words atop a graveyard of hundreds more which didn't make the cut. Hours of grueling writing, inching forward one word at a time---every phrase is painstakingly written and rewritten. I don't even think I'm supposed to do this level of revision at this stage. This blog isn't supposed to present the pinnacle of my writing, right? I mean, the only real requirement is that it's in prose form and fills a good part of the screen, and then we can worry about putting it through revisions later on. 

Doesn't matter to me though, apparently, because I can't stand putting something forward which I don't really like. Even if I know that's the point of the assignment. 

Perfectionism. That tendency in me to make things just the way I like it, at the expense of efficiency, speed, sanity, punctuality. That urge to satiate that tendency, on the threat of an aching feeling of dissatisfaction of letting go of work 'unfinished.' 

Half-loaded dishwasher? Under my watch, it becomes an unloaded dishwasher...and then a fully-loaded dishwasher.

Strategy game to play? There's a way to play it I've come up with (not the best way, but a consistent way), and I will follow the rules I set for myself down to a science. 

Essay to write? I told you already. That one's the worst.

I know I'd be better off without perfectionism---or at least with less of it. If I just let my bad ideas sit on the page, I could be done so much easier. I could actually turn in my posts on time, for once.  If I just somehow quit feeling that innate frustration with something I created that looks wrong, quit feeling that need to fix this god damn mess! --- that would take so much stress out of my daily life. If I could somehow find a happy medium between perfection and nothing, that would be amazing.

But on the other hand, I haven't done that, and I don't know if I really want to. There's a reason I have these perfectionist tendencies. I like it when the things I create and do have fewer rough edges. I like being able to honestly stand behind my work. And I can't magically evaporate the discomfort I get from imperfection. Am I really supposed to eat that inquietude for the sake of getting more done? Maybe satiating my little perfectionist impulses---sacrificing optimized time usage for mental expedience---is actually the less "perfectionist" route for me to take.

Really, there isn't much of a spectrum of perfection or imperfection. We're picking and choosing what kind of perfection we want, in every part of our lives, like a game of whack-a-mole. Is it perfection in short-term things, like writing one essay well, or perfection in long-term things, like getting every essay done? Hit one perfect, and another imperfect pops up.

It's a hard balance to strike. Maybe there's a third kind of perfection too to balance. But I won't waste my time writing about that, even if it'd make this essay better. It's tech week today, and there are other things I want perfected. If I've learned anything from the past few hours of writing this, it's that if I want some things to go right, I'll have to choose to leave some things imperfect.