Another Facet of Perfectionism

My mind is fuzzy tonight – not like being drunk or medicated – just unfocused and wandering aimlessly. It seems to happen a lot lately. Right now, maybe it’s because I’m a bit tired – too little sleep, lots of sunshine and fresh air combining to make me lethargic and uninspired. As usual in my life, I had imaginations about what this week in Siesta Key would be like and how much I would be able to accomplish. We’re more than halfway through the week and I’ve had some good Bible study time, two beautiful, long walks on the beach and some sweet, unpressured-by-time prayer sessions – but writing? Very little and not terribly profitable. The only take-away so far seems to be the realization that there are chapters unwritten, and documents (letters, etc.) that I thought I’d entered into my computer but maybe haven’t since I can’t seem to find them. I don’t have the letter Mark wrote to us or the letter my mom wrote to Mark – both rather crucial items. Mark’s letter to us I needed now because one of the chapters that I realized I haven’t written yet is the one portraying our first meeting that July 3rd. Yesterday I was trying to insert a description of how strong genetics proved to be, but I’d rather do it by quoting bits of his letter and talking about how his choices and talents meshed with the family even though we’d never been with him.

As far as Mom’s letter … I’m still trying to decide exactly how to use that. As a stand alone? Just select quotes from it? Use the same treatment that I did with my journal entry about the abortion? I really can’t decide – and I guess I don’t have to right now, since neither item is available to me. Ah well, they’ll both have to wait until I return to California in two weeks and can fish out the letters.

My other struggle with my writing right now is emotional – the chapters I’ve been working on – about our engagement, wedding, honeymoon and children’s births – all seem to be dry and lacking in imagination and engagement. At least, they do to me. I can’t really put my finger on what ails them; I just know they leave me sort of cold and I’m not excited about anyone reading them. Which is a problem …if I’m not excited about them, why would I expect anyone else to be? Been waiting for inspiration to spark something – so far the tinder is still dry!

Maybe I’ll leave this for now and see about doing a little rewriting/editing on one of them …

Three years later –
It’s now April of 2021. I’m sitting at LAX waiting for a plane, but I’ve been pondering about what to post next for the last few days. I actually forgot I’d even written this … but reading it just now, it brought me right back to that day, and I realized that many things have changed; some things have not!

I did work my way through all of that confusion – and I did finish the final draft of the book a few months later. Then came the year and a half of editing, re-writing, editing again … and again; designing a book cover, writing back cover copy, putting all the final details in place, sending it to be formatted and then — YAY! Getting to read it one more time for final approval!

And, I was able to put my finger on what ailed those chapters: I’d begun writing from my head again, instead of from my heart, (God pointed it out to me rather emphatically one day), so I basically had to start over almost completely with those sections. The quandary about Mom’s letter to Mark and how to present it? Steve and I decided together not to use it at all. We came to a point where a decision was made – anything we put in Clandestiny needed to fit one, or both, of two criteria: it had to move the story forward and be of possible help to someone else. That letter missed on both counts, so it stayed in the file. Maybe it will see the light of day at some point in the future …

The things that haven’t changed? I still have the tendency to go into a time period with grandiose expectations of what I’m going to accomplish. And more often than not, those expectations don’t materialize into reality. I suffer from two maladies: perfectionism and procrastination – and they are not compatible bedmates. How the two of them can exist in one person baffles me a bit, since on the face they seem to be polar opposites. BUT, I think I may have an inkling on how that works. Since I unrealistically strive for perfection, I procrastinate in accomplishing the task for fear the final result will not being perfect.

Remember my posts about perfectionism? I may have just identified yet another side to my relationship with it!