Have no fear of perfection. You’ll never reach it.

SALVADOR DALI

One of the reasons that I enjoy doing my series Life: From A to Z is that most of the time I’m not even sure what I’m going to write about. These posts are very spontaneous. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t. But, HEY, nobody’s perfect!

It’s usually either a great quote that I manage to dig up, or the content of my featured image that inspires me or helps me along. In the case of the letter “P,” it was the “perfect” quote (above) that helped me select my p-word; PERFECTION.

Good old enticing… titillating… and unattainable perfection.

Believe it or not, my image was inspired by the p-word “playful.” I’ve been wanting to try new things, so I took a few minutes to learn about the various brushes that you can use in Photoshop. Mainly where to find them and how to load them into the program. Ha! There is SO much to learn and SO many tools!

I thought it would be fun to create something playfully, rather than worrying about whether or not I was doing it perfectly. This mindset proved to be a success because I had no idea what the strokes or blots would look like until I tried them out, so my creation came to life spontaneously—kind of like my posts. And I had fun doing it. I got pretty excited when I found the brush that created the whitecaps. I just love them!

Anyway, it’s common knowledge that striving for perfection causes paralysis. It’s so much easier to do nothing than it is to do something wrong! And for me, the fear of not being perfect often stops me dead in my tracks, especially when it comes to trying new things.

In recovery, we say to strive for progress, not perfection. I think that playfulness can fill in for progress every now and then, especially when you’re struggling to move past paralysis. So I say to strive for playfulness, not perfection, and then you WILL make progress.

The secret of genius is to carry the spirit of the child into old age, which means never losing your enthusiasm

ALDOUS HUXLEY