I don’t know if I have ever written a single good poem. I don’t know if I have ever taken a truly great photograph. I don’t know if I ever will.
What I do know, is that I’ve gotten better. Slowly, sometimes painfully so, quantity has created a quality. At least I hope so.
I don’t say this to elicit a response or an argument, I don’t say this to bait you fair readers into a compliment of any kind, I say it to be truthful, and I say it because I think for far too long when it comes to creative output, the importance has been placed so firmly on quality, that quantity has been demonized and treated as the lesser of two options. If given the choice, always create one perfect thing instead of 100 things that aren’t, they say.
I think, they are wrong.
I just revisited a great article by the amazing (and prolific) Austin Kleon where he discussed the parable about the photography teacher assigning his class into two groups: A group that would be graded on the quantity of their work, and a group that would be graded on the quality. At the end when all the photos had been developed, the quantity group consistently churned out higher quality images, better photographs, than the group graded on quality. Turns out, chasing perfection leads to a paralyzing, or at the very least tranquilizing effect on the art you create.
My Typewriter Series, the poetry I create straight out of my typewriter, currently has about 3,200 poems in it. My The Never Was series another 250 on top of that. Sarah and I have photographed over 225 weddings with our wedding and elopement photography business, Chasers of the Light. This Signal Fire currently has almost 1100 published pieces. I believe, firmly, if I were to look at the very first things I wrote, the very first things I photographed and edited, and then compared them to the very last, the quality would have improved dramatically as a consequence of all that quantity.
This, despite never giving a single stinking thought to creating anything remotely resembling perfect.
There is no perfect, there never has been, there never will be.
Some things I make I love more than others, and if forced to bet, to put money down on the wager, I’d say they’ll “do” better than others. I’d think more people would share them, engage with them, like them, whatever. Some things I make are one-offs, are throwaway thoughts that I hastily get out of my brain, as all the art I create is just to relieve pressure in my busy, busy brain. I never, ever, know which will actually land. I never know which will disappear. Some things I almost don’t get down on paper take off, some things I pour hours into vanish in to the forgotten ether of the internets.
This is not a post about writing. This is not a post about photography. Really, this is not a post about art, at all. This is a post about being human, about doing our best to navigate through a life that always presents us with two options: Chase perfection, or do what we can do to be what we’re meant to be. To try. To keep trying despite it almost always feeling like we’re not a single step closer to that holy grail of PERFECT.
We wait for permission to begin practicing an art we’ve always wanted to attempt. We wait to begin therapy until we’re ready, until we’re at the ‘right place,’ we don’t begin our exercise program we’ve promised ourselves we’ll start until after the holidays, then after that, then when we buy the right equipment or the perfect gym membership or find the best buddy to accompany us. We think we’re not worthy of love and so we avoid it, we wait, and we wait, and we trade years of our lives for this idea of the perfect person coming and us being the perfect people ready to be loved. We treat quality as the goal, only chasing that which is already ideal, already wonderful, already easy, already worthy, whatever worthy may mean to us.
What if quality, was only a side-effect, instead of the goal? What if quality stopped being something we aimed at, and was instead something that quietly arrived from time to time, almost sneakily, while we were busy working?
What if the more we make, the better the things we make end up being?
I say damn the man that praises perfection, I say make the things badly. I say make them even if unfinished, even if unvarnished, even if unsure. I say make it anyway, make it because we’re here to make, to create, to build more than we destroy. I say we don’t become good and THEN create, we create because we must, and somewhere along that long and dusty road, we become good after all. I say I’m still 1,000,000,000 miles from good, but I keep putting things out into the universe, I keep hoping for the best. I say I’ll keep aiming my camera at what I Love, I’ll keep aiming my words at the same, I’ll keep emptying out my mind in order to clear the cobwebs, I’ll keep sharing it all in the off-chance that someone, somewhere, needs to hear those words, as imperfect as they might be.
I wonder, as I sit here writing what is my uncountably written words, wondering how many of you are waiting to be good enough, to be smart enough, to be ready enough, to be perfect enough to begin? I wonder how many are worried that what you make, what you create, what you are will be met with silence instead of adoration, and I wonder when you too will come to the realization that most of what we make, do, are, WILL be met with silence, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter. I wonder, so I will ask you, and hope you’ll answer:
What is one thing, one project, you’ve been holding back on doing because it’s not ‘perfect’ yet? Tell me in the comments below, say it out loud, then go do it. Today. No excuses, no b.s., just begin.
Perfectionism is just procrastination all gussied up and put into a fancy ball gown. It’s an excuse, it’s nonsense, and it’s time we put it to bed. Forever.
I’ll never write a perfect thing, not once, not ever. I’ll never take a perfect photograph, I’ll never say the perfect thing to the person that needs to hear from me, but I’ll be damned if I won’t keep writing, finding images, or speaking out the only truths I know. I’ll keep trying, I’ll keep making, and I’ll keep forgetting to give a single rat’s ass about how many millions of miles I am from good, from great, from perfect, I truly am.
I’ll become, instead of succeed.
Nothing more.
