🎵Long after the thrill🎵
Overcoming sneaky perfectionism
One of my weird skills is being able to sing select classic rock songs exactly or nearly on key—from memory. I attribute it to years of choral training and pretty good pitch.
Yesterday while we were playing our family’s favorite card game Skip Bo, I hollered at Alexa to play a random assortment of songs by the Eagles, Beach Boys, and James Taylor while I tried to mentally pick the pitch and hum it aloud before they started playing. My streak lasted for about six songs before I couldn’t quite pitch-match anymore. My guesses were close—but not quite.
At some point in my preteen days, Shel Silverstein’s line “almost perfect . . . but not quite” became part of the family lexicon. With emphasis we’d sing-song, “almost perfect,” pause meaningfully, and drawl out Mary Hume’s final fateful words, “but nooooooot quite.” We’d giggle and giggle at ourselves, imitating the poet’s own cadences heard in this recording of the poem.
Not surprisingly, this poem did not deter me from growing up trying to control as much as I possibly could.
Not surprisingly, this poem did not deter me from growing up trying to control as much as I possibly could. I really dug into exactness and performance, especially academically. Many of you know, deep in your millennial bones, what comes next—by the time I made it to my first semester in college, I burned out. I burned out again in grad school and again when I hit the workforce. I’ve been in burnout for the past two years.
Maintaining excellence, even perceived excellence, is exhausting, and it is counterproductive to actual survival, even if it seems plausible to mental survival.
Sitting down to write this newsletter, I read the partial draft I had already written, and I realized it was a litany of burnout. Emptiness. Depression. Self-doubt. Tired of everything. Learning to set down patterns that I’ve worn like an old all-weather garment. My self-esteem has been so low lately that I haven’t been able to bring myself to show up to writing my own newsletter, to doodling with sparkly pens in journals in honor of my inner teen.
John Mellencamp’s line punctuates my thoughts: “Oh yeah, life goes on, long after the thrill of living is gone.” I have been feeling very much post-thrill-of-living.
I have been feeling very much post-thrill-of-living.
These feelings are driven by a real set of layered and interlacing trauma responses, one of which is sneaky perfectionism, laid down by my brain as a plausible survival strategy to keep me safe.
Although I didn’t realize it until a week ago, sneaky perfectionism has been making a subtle and powerful appearance. The logic goes like this: If I can’t do something amazing or if I can’t be the best possible version of myself, why bother? What a fabulous way to halt progress, to make sure I never get hurt ever, ever again through trying. What a way to trick myself into trying to control the results of actions I’m not taking because I can’t predict the outcome.
So much of my time in brain injury and chronic illness recovery I’ve tried harder. I couldn’t let up. When I took rest from getting better, I pushed to get back up again. I had to override overwhelming despair again and again. I had to try again. If I didn’t fix my life, I was going to die. If only I could have allowed myself to play more freely. I’ve taken getting well as extremely serious business. I’ve needed to show that even if I couldn’t be a professional participating in the workforce, I could be professional in my healing. Being where I was, right there and then, was not good enough. I had to always be trying to get somewhere else. A recipe for discouragement.
With sneaky perfectionism in the background, I have had a psychological need to heal well and to do well in my healing. My bumbling attempts at doing physical therapy or vision therapy counted less somehow than those of a better version of myself who could follow a routine or find a clear path to healing faster.
All my imperfect work didn’t add up to much in my mind because it was done in such extremity and with such huge losses in previous skill. I could almost sing on pitch. I could almost read. I could remember pieces of my own life. It was so important for me to publish The Brain’s Lectionary: Psalms and Observations to show myself, and others, that you can create when you’re at your weakest and that an offering like that is so valuable to others going through the same experience. But I still failed to internalize that message as it pertained to my healing.
Being able to almost do those things, or to do them with some skill but not a usual amount of skill, felt like a failure. (When it feels like I need to do all the things all the time just to maintain a very poor level of function compared to what I could do before, doing less just isn’t good enough, even if that’s all I have to give. I wanted it all back, and now!)
I wanted it all back, and now!
All of this is understandable, and I don’t hold this weakness against myself any more. I am not my own judge. I’m glad to be letting an unrealistic fantasy ideal of my own performance go to make way for even more organic growth (hopefully with less angst and more play). Eight years of trying imperfectly has garnered me a significant increase of skill compared to where I was after my injury, which has released some of the survival pressure, and I am excited to see how introducing more joy and play accelerates my healing.
Shel Silverstein’s poem ends with Mary Hume at heaven’s gate, where the echoey pronouncement comes, “Almost perfect, but not quite.” Instead of finding this harsh, I find it heartening. I will always be adequately inadequate. My best attempts will always find me imperfect, and that’s plenty good enough. With the thrill of maintaining perfectionistic standards beginning to fade, I’m free to thrill in my many imperfect attempts daily.
I hope that this newsletter can continue to be one of those attempts. I have more I want to talk about.
Glimmers
If your brain has been swallowed by its own negativity bias, I hope these glimmers will cheer you up.
My sister sent me this song, and it reminded me that I cannot and do not need to overcome by myself. I listened to it on repeat while writing this.
The most sublime piano and the gentlest soul
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I read this transcendent poem by and could not add it to my favorite poems notebook fast enough.
Another amazing deer poem, this one by
My mom and I finished a quilt we’ve been working on since before the pandemic started.
We worked in tandem. I cut out and project managed all the tiny little pieces, and she sewed quite a bit. The long-arm quilt pattern was created by another Utah quilt artist. Together we make one quilter and a half (I am the half). I love how this design looks like a series of flashlights or a fiber representation of the double-slit experiment—light as particle, light as wave. It is now my main quilt!
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Finally, this sheet cake is all about the cinnamon. Feel free to substitute gluten-free flour! From the Texas Country Reporter Cookbook (1990), p. 162
Mexican Chocolate Cake
Cake
2 c. flour
2 c. sugar
½ c. margarine
½ c. shortening
4 TBSP cocoa
1 c. water
½ c. buttermilk (substitute
1/2 c. milk to 1 TBSP vinegar)
2 eggs lightly beaten
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. cinnamon
1tsp. vanilla
1 pinch salt
To make the cake:
1. Heat oven to 400 degrees
2. In the Kitchenaid bowl, mix flour and sugar
3. Saucepan over medium heat: margarine, shortening, cocoa, water. Light boil.
4. Separate bowl: combine buttermilk, egg, soda, cinnamon, vanilla, salt. Whisk til smooth.
5. Pour cocoa mixture into flour mixture. Mix until smooth.
6. Add the buttermilk mixture. Mix until smooth
7. Grease 12x18 cooking sheet
8. Pour mixture into pan. Bake for 20 minutes.
Frosting
½ c. margarine
4 TBSP cocoa
6 TBSP milk
1 lb. powdered sugar
1 tsp. vanilla
To make the frosting
1. Add margarine, cocoa, milk in saucepan over medium heat. Soft boil.
2. Add powdered sugar and vanilla. Whisk until smooth.
3. Spread on cake while frosting and cake are still warm.