This post is about allowing things to be imperfect. First of all, let me define what “imperfect” means. In this discussion, imperfect is anything my mind deems to be “out of place,” or “not as ideal as it can be.” It’s a judgment, and I make it up.
My mind is full of judgments. It is full of assessments and opinions about how things should be. That is the standard, however made up, misguided, or wrong-headed, I am using here. An example just came up as I was giving the title to this post. “Allowing the Rough Edges.” A little voice of insecurity came up and said to me, “Have you noticed how many of your posts lately have started with an ‘-ing’ word? Too many! You are going to look like a royal ass. You should change that.” And then I thought about what a different title might be. I realized that this title worked, I did not want to change it, and so I kept it, rather than changing it to appease some voice of insecurity.
There’s another little thing I’ve been dealing with on my blog, which is adding Facebook comment capability. As of a few days ago, readers can leave a comment after each post from their Facebook accounts. I thought this might be an inviting way to encourage comments. But then I realized that the plug-in I use doesn’t notify me when people comment. So theoretically, there could be comments on previous posts right now that I am completely oblivious of. This isn’t ideal.
In the past, this little imperfection may have caused me to take the FB comment plug-in down, or otherwise worry about it. But I decided to just let it be. It is kind of cool to give people the opportunity to leave comments simply using their Facebook identity… even if there’s a change I won’t see it. I’m riding the uncertainty, allowing the perfection, allowing the rough edges.
Same with my websites. They need to be over-hauled, worked on, changed, yada yada, I have been aware of this problem for months, but I just haven’t yet dealt with it. I’ve just let it be, maybe the timing isn’t right yet, or maybe I’m lazy. Not really sure. But I’m just going forward, and letting the imperfection be there.
I find that somehow life goes on. The world doesn’t stop just because, in my opinion, there is something imperfect or flawed about something in my life. Somehow, life goes on. This might seem incredibly obvious, but as a reforming perfectionist, you’d be surprised how this still surprises me sometimes. I guess those rough edges may not be so cataclysmic as I once thought 🙂