Do Over

In which I write about the crippling effects of perfectionism.

I just finished reading Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin. The book has been recommended to me many, many times in the few years since its publication. However, it wasn’t until my friend, Lauren, said it might be her favorite book of all time that I actually purchased a copy and read the thing.

Wow. This is an outstanding book.

Beyond telling you that I think you should most definitely read it, if you have not already, which I know many of you have, I’m not going to say too much about it. I want to talk about the actual playing of games and the making of work.

Towards the end of the novel the protagonist, Sadie Green, addresses her Advance Games seminar, “If you’re always aiming for perfection, you won’t make anything at all…We’d be playing Super Mario, and if we missed even one gold coin, or got hit by one Koopa, we’d begin again.” Essentially, if you play in this way - to get every gold coin to avoid every Koopa, though I do not know what one is, you will literally never get anywhere.

Um, yeah. You are correct Ms. Zevin.

When I consider the way I play or create or, let’s be honest, function, I recognize that I live in the space of the restart, the ‘begin again’ that Sadie mentions to her class. My approach has never been about the approach, about the making or creating, but about the outcome. And, that outcome needed to be a certain way.

It’s only in the lest last few years that I’ve found the grace around perfection, but patterns are generally quite sticky and I am still learning. What I’ve found is that when I am approaching the actual creation of something in this way, thinking of hitting every marker, reaching every viewer, touching every note in the most specific way, I literally get nowhere.

At a certain point in my twenties, I played an inordinate about amount of Ms. Pacman at Chinatown Fair on Mott Street. I had a very specific way to play: eating not just every pellet, but also every ghost, every fruit (and the pretzel). It wasn’t about getting through each level quickly to get to places (levels) I had never reached, but about getting that banana (IFYKYK¹) and being highest up on the leaderboard. I was so focused on this goal, that it barely even dawned on me that the fruits (and the pretzel) were changing with each level. In all likelihood, I would have gotten to the banana a lot quicker had I stepped back and just enjoyed the narrative a bit more.

When my goal is perfection there is not enough space for magic. In order to create actual magic, find the flow that comes from being present with my work - from writing my Substack to helping a student breakdown an assignment into digestible chunks - I have to let go of the outcome and just be in the process.

This means doing the work even if the feeling isn’t striking me. It means getting into position and making while I wait for the wave of vulnerability and magic and humor and empathy to come over me and anoint me with a small idea from which to keep going. It also means that said wave may not hit, but I have to keep making. When I am constantly hoping to clear the board and do it completely right, I’m likely not going to make it very far.

Here’s to not being perfect and just getting the work done.

1. Mom, this is an acronym for If You Know You Know.