Embracing Imperfection

It’s officially citrus season in Arizona and the fruit is delicious. The grapefruits are sweet without any sourness. The lemons are juicy and fragrant. My heart is full. 🍋 💜 🍋

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I was sick, the kind of sick that kicked my butt. A head cold (thankfully not COVID after two negative tests) mixed with vertigo and tinnitus. I felt pretty useless. My to-do list sat next to me, taunting me as the days of rest and recovery rolled by, and my only priority was getting better.

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Needless to say, I missed getting an essay out last week over on Substack. I felt disappointed in myself, ashamed even. My goal has been to write an essay each week, to take pieces of an unpublished memoir draft and adapt them for Substack. 52 essays, one a week.

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I had been doing so well. No missed weeks. I didn’t skip a beat even when I had shingles in July. Or when I traveled. Or when the holidays came. It felt REALLY good to set a goal and to be hitting the mark week after week for 7 months. I felt proud of myself, deeply proud.

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Then January came and this unexpected slip. Forces out of my control.

I toyed with the idea of putting an essay out, even if it was brief and concise. But as the medicine clouded my thoughts and the fatigue overtook me, I fell into a fog and there was no chance that I could form coherent words. Thus the missed week and a break in my streak.

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A familiar feeling washed over me. A feeling of grave disappointment. Of missing the mark, of being flawed and imperfect. A sweeping sense of failure. The sensation I have spent much of my life running from. All week I was forced to sit with the failure, that I missed a week and would not have a perfect record. That when I look back on this year of writing, I will see this glaring error. There is no making up for it. No way to fix it or twist the narrative. It is what it is.

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Now at this point, I am aware of how dramatic this sounds. But here’s the thing - I take my goals very seriously. When I make a commitment, it means a lot to me. I don’t make promises or set goals lightly. I am fully in and I do everything in my power to reach the end. I want the sense of accomplishment, the rush of knowing I met the goal, even if it’s one that I set with myself. Anything less feels like a major disappointment.

So there I was, disappointed but on the mend. In the midst of illness, I realized that maybe what is MORE important than 52 perfectly timed essays, released each week, is what happens when I do miss the mark. Maybe the bigger accomplishment is what happens when I miss the goal. When I fall short. How do I treat myself? Do I extend compassion? Do I allow myself to be human instead of raging against my humanity? Do I sit with my imperfection, and choose to not see it as a weakness?

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Keeping to an arbitrary goal is the easier path. Being harsh and strict with myself is the journey with less growth. Being a drill sergeant with my internal world is the familiar route I have been down many times before. I know how to do that. I have excelled in that regard. But maybe it’s time for something gentler.

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What is true growth (and I would argue the bigger accomplishment) is what happens when I miss the mark. How I treat myself. How I regroup. How I choose to think about myself and my goals. How I extend self-compassion to myself and honor my humanity. What I choose to do next.

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The bigger accomplishment for me is embracing the imperfection.

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I don’t typically embrace imperfection. Instead I cautiously side-eye it, wishing it would vanish and leave me alone. I don’t take it with both arms and pull it in. I’d rather live without it. I resent its presence in my life and try to pretend it’s not there. So embracing imperfection is a radical move for me, and arguably the more important goal and lesson to have learned from this year.

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Yes, I won’t have a perfect track record when this year of writing ends. And maybe that can be a badge of honor. I lived (and I got sick) and it was imperfect and magnificent.

Maybe we set the rules. Maybe we decide what matters and what doesn’t. Maybe what we thought was the lesson is really something else all together. Maybe it matters less that I didn’t write one essay each week for a year and what really counts is how I treated myself in the process. The self-compassion that I embodied. The imperfection that I embraced, rather than resisted.

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So here I am, this imperfect human, extending compassion to myself and to you.

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