31 Days of Getting You Started! January 30: Perfection is a (boring) lie.

31 Days of Getting You Started! January 30: Perfection is a (boring) lie.

January 30, 2014 Uncategorized 0

Below this, you’ll see a link to my first professional video on Vimeo. (“Carlota! You made this? For me? Wow, you’re like some gorgeous, short, low-budget, Cecil B. DeMille, stuck in Queens!” “Oh, you!” *giggles, tosses hair*) But seriously. It’s my first professional video, and while not perfect, I’m pretty damn proud of it. (Translation: Talk smack about it, and you hear that knocking on your door? That’s me, ready to re-enact this scene: http://youtu.be/NwwY9y6O3hw) No, the video isn’t perfect. I don’t have an endless budget. But I worked with some super talented, patient and fun people and we ended up with something that, I suspect, we’re all pretty proud of.

But, if I had said, “No, the video’s not perfect; it’s not exactly the way I saw it in my (fevered) brain, we can’t release it!”  Well, two things would have happened: 1) My totally mild-mannered cameraman/editor would have probably “accidentally” (i.e. with malice aforethought) have rented a car, run me down, backed up and done it again, and 2) I’d be back at square one, waiting for a mythical perfect video. Perfection is the bane of existence. Existence depends on progress; progress depends on making mistakes, learning from them, and moving forward, inexorably forward. The desire for perfection, therefore, always halts your progress.

I hate perfection because it reminds me of the years I wasted as an anorexic, always putting my life off until my weight was “perfect,” and I could bear to be seen by the world. At my worst, in college, I was 107 lbs–so. Not. Hawt!–and if the scale went to 110, I’d be disgusted by myself. Grim years.

Whenever people talk about having to do things “perfectly,” or “just right,” or that they’re “not quite ready,” I invariably flash back to my college gym, where I’d work out for hours and then always end the workout sessions weighing myself, anxious to see the “comforting” (dear god) numbers read 107. I think of that horrible memory, and then I want to, all at once, gag, cram 2 cheeseburgers into my mouth and punch reason with those misguided souls, who inexplicably, think they have so much time on this planet, they can afford to waste it hating themselves. Oh? You don’t hate yourself? Great, prove me wrong: go out and do all the exciting things you keep talking about. The things you say you can’t do yet, because your life isn’t quite perfect. Do those things now.  Because you’re not perfect, thank god, you’re something so much better: you’re “just” human.

http://vimeo.com/85408571

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