Perfectly imperfect...

I haven't written in a while. It's not that the words haven't been coming or a lack of inspiration... to be honest I'm not 100% sure what's been holding me back from posting. Other than a simple fear that whatever I write is not good enough. I'm a self confessed perfectionist, I want every thing that I do to be the best it can possibly be. Often this drive for perfection holds captive from ever doing anything to completion. I start something with this idea of what it should be and then at some point along the way to completion I realise that it is not going to be what I imagined. So I quit, I leave the imperfect project in the closet gathering dust. Yet another failure.

The same with my writing. I want everything I write to be deep and insightful. I have this silly dream of the simple words that I write somehow magically finding someone at the right time and moving of the page (or computer screen ) and floating through the air to land somewhere near your heart at the time that you most need them. The reality is that I have hundreds of files filled with uncompleted blog posts, articles, stories and book ideas sitting on my hard-drive gathering computer dust (or whatever it is that they gather). Incomplete, imperfect, forgotten moments of life's inspiration I wished to share.

This year for me has been a struggle on a personal lever possibly more than any year to date. The self imposed expectations at times more often than not have frozen my feet to the ground in fear of doing something wrong. This being grounded in fear is uncomfortable and in all reality depressing, it's like not being able to tell if you are happy or sad. This weird limbo where everything is in front of you but the choice is... I like the way Sylvia Plath put it in her book The Bell Jar

"I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn’t quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn’t make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet."

Perhaps perfection isn't the point of life, maybe aiming for perfection with my writing is a lofty unobtainable goal, there is the very real chance that even with everything that I write nothing I ever write will touch people. The thing that I am  slowly and painfully coming to realise is this... Life is not perfect and I am not, nor will I ever be perfect. So rather than beating myself up about the imperfections, my faults, stumbling blocks and living my life looking down and backward. Maybe my life should simply be about looking up and forward, and moving in that direction. Living fully, loving unconditionally and growing completely, with a full heart. Simply and imperfectly chasing the one who is.