“Decluttering Perfectionism”
Have you ever poured your life force into something, finished it, and decided it was complete shit?
A big part of this past summer and fall was spent creating a pebble mosaic in the center of the neighbourhood I live in. The idea emerged through a conversation with a beloved tree.
The design is comprised of four corners and a circular element surrounding a central firepit. The first three corners took until late September to complete, pushing the project into October, and I was debating delaying the fourth corner until the spring.
I was also stalling coming up with a plan for it, but my excellent friend Leslie, who has been indispensable in helping me get this project over the finish line, pronounced, “You have to get the final corner done this year.” It was the right call.
I got to work designing, we watched for a day that would stay above freezing, and when it came we went for it.
Leslie helped with the demanding physical job of mixing and pouring mortar, as well as placing the black edging stones for each corner so I could get the bigger design pieces in place early on.
Install day turned out to be a 17-hour epic. Wind gusts up to 60 kmph interrupted the creative process several times as I chased down errant tupperwares, buckets and rags, picked leaves out of wet mortar and did my best to keep the hatches battened down. (Love the one yellow leaf in the photo above, an early messenger of the chaos that was coming.)
Below is a shot of how far along things were by 5pm, at which time I was sure I was within a couple of hours of completion. Typical with creative undertakings, my time math was way off.
I finished at 2am, with the last seven hours spent working by headlamp. This might explain my state of mind in completing the 4th corner, which by all accounts should have been jubilant and celebratory.
It was not.
Wrapping the final clean up, I cast a dog-tired eye on the completed work and thought, “I fucking hate it.”
The next morning, assessing it in the light of day, I felt even more certain I’d brought the whole project down with this last corner, and began plotting how to chisel out all the ‘misplaced’ stones and make it right. But another voice, a louder, clearer one said, “You will not. You have to respect the medium. When mortar has dried, the creative process is over.”
I felt the truth of this, but it didn’t stop the obsessive desire to fix it.
Later that morning I joined my 3 best friends for our weekly zoom call and they checked in, “How’d the final corner go?”
I said, “I fucking hate it.”
In true best friend form, they said, “Okay, we’re not going to gaslight or patronize you. We’re ready. We’ll hate it with you. Show us.”
I screen-shared a photo and braced for impact.
Jess looked up from a book she was scanning to share a quote about failure being a part of the creative process, saw the image and broke into uncontained laugher. Not the response I expected, nor was the look of admiration on all of their faces.
They said, “You’ve lost all perspective. It’s gorgeous.”
PERFECTIONISM IS A RUN-AROUND
This is the beast of perfectionism. You chase yourself in circles, certain that 3 more hours spent tweaking that thing that is not yet the very best it can be is how you will be able to relax and trust you’re okay in the world.
I’ve made a commitment to free myself from the grip of perfectionism in 2025 so I can get more of my work in the world, more often. That’s had me get really curious about this compulsion, and here’s what I’m discovering:
Perfectionism is not about fixing things. It’s a reaction to the wildly uncomfortable feeling that things aren’t exactly right.
I love becoming aware of this as a feeling rather than an assessment. When it's an assessment, it's very black-and-white, linear and certain: something out there needs to be addressed, fixed or resolved. Cue: perfectionism/obsession, and moving away from well-being.
In this experience what I wanted to chisel out of existence was the intense response in my nervous system to things not being as good, as right, as perfect as they could be. Then I could feel a sense of peace (until the next time).
Feelings cannot be fixed, they can only be felt. If we cultivate the presence, the courage and the curiosity to stay with what’s uncomfortable—when we’re not rejecting or fragmenting any part of our experience—then we come into wholeness.
When you support integration in your inner space, you’re connected with the true source of well-being.
THE PEBBLE MOSAIC COMPLETED CORNERS
Island Tree Project - East corner
Island Tree Project - West corner
Island Tree Project - South corner
Island Tree Project - North corner
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This is the beast of perfectionism: you chase yourself in circles, certain that 3 more hours spent tweaking that thing that is not yet the very best it can be is how you will be able to relax and trust you’re okay in the world.