This email wasn’t perfect, so I almost didn’t send it
Oh, hi friends!
Are you a perfectionist?
If you are, how do you deal with it?
If you’re not, do you wish you were?
(I am not! But we can talk about that some other time.)
Perfectionist tendencies give you standards, and that’s wonderful. But they can also get in the way of finishing. Shipping. Moving.
You can push everything back again and again, waiting for the perfect moment, the perfect draft.
But you know what? That’s OK! And you know why?
No one knows your original deadline.
Plans change. Things happen. Maybe perfection is just around the corner.
But the people who engage with your work, read your story, watch your play, listen to your song, buy your product—they have no idea if your original deadline was long ago.
Maybe you told yourself you’d launch in March. Now it’s September. Who cares? People can only see what you are bringing them now.
So will you wait for perfection? Or will you actually give them something?
"When you have a spare minute, pick up your book instead of scrolling through your phone.”
LOL. If I did this, I would read a book a day! Grateful to Charlotte Maiorana for sending me this advice from Julie Ehlers, who read 141 books last year. Oh my. Something to strive for!
A Note From 30,000 Feet
I’m writing this newsletter from my second flight, from Phoenix to Fresno, and am struck—YET AGAIN—but how clarifying flying can be. When you eliminate your same routines, your dirty dishes, your laundry to pick up, when you’re forced to turn on airplane mode (you know I love my airplane mode), and no one can find you except maybe your seat mate and the flight attendant, and there’s nothing left but you, your thoughts, and maybe the reading material you brought, well, that’s when you can feel extraordinarily small. You’re a little creature in a tin can hurtling through the clouds. This is good. It makes everything tumbling around your mind feel small, too.
Also, I never pay for Wi-Fi and so couldn’t find you a fun YouTube video to watch so had to fill this space.
;)
Do you like these daily emails? Please share with a friend!
Thanks, as always, for reading.
Love, Kara