July 19th, 2022
Over the years, a topic that comes up frequently when I’m talking to people about creativity is perfectionism.
A lot of people struggle with it. Many of them attribute their need to be perfect as the reason they don’t finish any projects.
Then they look at my table full of words and art and smile (condescendingly?) as if to say, “Well, you clearly don’t have a problem with wanting to be perfect.”
The fuck I don’t.
I’m an obsessive. I become obsessed. I spend most of my time trying to keep myself balanced (tl;dr I’m a recovered addict).
And that obsession doesn’t just lend itself to perfectionism. It lives in it.
Every single work I have ever released is just that: a release. Throwing pages to the wind, I’m letting go of small pieces of me: the pieces that tell me I’m not good enough, I’m not smart enough, I’m not talented enough, my story is not important.
Take The Weirdos. There are pages I am immensely proud of; conversely, there are panels that make me cringe. But as a whole, it is a vital work that is both itself alive and makes me feel so.
It is not perfect. Nor am I. But we both exist, and that is far more important.
Brushfire took forever because, now, I’m working digitally. That means I can obsess over EVERY. SINGLE. LINE. Because I can draw that line over and over and over again, an infinite amount of times.
That perfectionism, that obsession, will never go away.
The only thing that can change is me; what I consider to be perfect, and how important being perfect is to living an authentic life.
In my restaurant work, I feel like I do a good job. And for every 100 people who feel the same way, 1 will tell me I am not and that I am bad at what I do.
The 1 will affect me more than the 100 every time.
And you can tell me that 1 is objectively lower than 100. And I will logically agree.
But that part of me who needs to be perfect, who obsesses, who needs everyone to like him — he is not a logical being.
And him and I need to talk this shit out every single day.
The Den 