Good Enough is Great: One Word for 2016

For last year's words belong to last year's language

And next year's words await another voice.

~ T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets

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link.  Blink. Blink. 

The cursor pulsates.  Steady.  Measuring.  Judging. It waits for my Muse to say something.  Anything.

I want this year to be different.  I want to end every day with at least five hundred words on the page. I want to be pain free and overflowing with energy.  I want this year to be perfect.

I want the impossible.

Oh, five hundred words a day is doable.  Pain-free is attainable if I avoid inflammatory foods.  But perfect? Not so much.

My clay dragon was doing so well...

Usually by now I have a word picked out for the year.  Last year it was Adventure.  Although I kicked my writerly Muse to the curb around mid-May and stopped journaling, I did at least try to find adventure throughout 2015.  In August, I took up kayaking – dragged into it moaning and complaining, and then promptly falling madly in love with the river. 

In October, I went to a writers’ conference in Wisconsin, where I managed to kayak the swells of Lake Michigan.  It wasn’t a conference in a remote part of Alaska, of course.  But I still managed to have an adventure of the heart there.  And I rediscovered my passion for writing.

So did I live out Adventure to the fullest?

Only I can determine that and I am my own worst critic.  Some inner demon – installed on my hard drive in childhood – keeps pulling me back three steps for each one I take forward.  It’s exhausting and discouraging.  And such weekly or daily battles drain me.  Make it difficult to even hear the Muse, much less live out what she says. 

L.M. Montgomery once said, “Despair is a free man, but hope is a slave.”  Sounds cynical but it’s true.  Hope may keep you going, yes, but it also keeps you tied – and when that something isn’t healthy or sane or doesn’t give you joy or add to your life in some way, then you have become a slave to anticipation.

It is, however, a new year and there’s something to be said for setting realistic expectations.  For too long, I’ve set them high -- too high for anyone to reach – yet I expected to reach them.  And fell into despair and stagnation when I failed.

Good Enough…is Great!

....and then he just fell apart. :(

Whether or not 2016 is “epic” (as I hoped 2015 would be), is no longer the measure of whether December will find me a better person or a more prolific writer.  This year, I’ve set goals with my ADD, depression, work schedule, and health in mind.  And that means setting my expectations to Good Enough. 

Not in the sense that I don’t put forth my best effort.  Rather, I will work to silence that inner demon that demands perfection from every single thing I undertake by doing the task and allowing the result to be good enough.  Even becoming comfortable with failure. 

Write every day

Kayak as often as I can

Visit old friends

Follow the Paleo lifestyle to heal my body

Continue making pottery

Send one card or letter a month

If I can do these things and learn to allow myself to be good enough, then 2016 just might end up an epic adventure after all.

Oremus pro invicem,

~ Mikaela

Posts on La Belle are written with the following fonts: Georgia, Times New Roman, Vivaldi, Edwardian, and occasionally Baroque Script.

Inviting Perfection: Why Failing is Okay

I believe that we learn by practice. Whether it means to learn to dance by practicing dancing or to learn to live by practicing living, the principles are the same. In each, it is the performance of a dedicated precise set of acts, physical or intellectual, from which comes shape of achievement, a sense of one's being, a satisfaction of spirit. One becomes, in some area, an athlete of God. Practice means to perform, over and over again in the face of all obstacles, some act of vision, of faith, of desire. Practice is a means of inviting the perfection desired.
~ Martha Graham

June is the FLX/WordCount Blogathon!  Join us for 30 Days of blogging madness!

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esterday I talked about whether blogging every day in a challenge would overwhelm readers and inadvertently force the writer to post less than stellar work.

Then I tweeted it to Jeff Goins.

I got schooled…and told some really great advice. 

Writing every day is a habit every writer should cultivate.  And if being part of a blog challenge is how you do it (like me), then that is what you use it for.

We should always be putting forth our best work, but we shouldn’t be afraid to put our words out there at all.  Nobody is perfect; every failure is an opportunity to learn and do better next time.

This is a concept a lot of us struggle with.

The pressure to perform at your peak 100% of the time is ingrained in many of us from a young age.  Failure is seen, not as an opportunity to learn, but an embarrassment to be avoided at all costs.

But think about it.  What is the best part of watching your favorite TV show or movie?  Yes the action was realistic.  The CGI was elegantly executed.  The plot artistically written.  The actors were at their peak.  But all of that pales in comparison to. . .

The gag reel.

I love watching my favorite actors burst out laughing right in the middle of a line.  Or completely forgetting their lines.  And their co-stars doing outrageous things on purpose to mess them up?  Classic.

Tell me the Neutron Cream Prank during the filming of Star Trek: Into Darkness wasn’t just beautiful.

Do you know why we love this?

Because it makes these larger than life stars seem closer.  They make mistakes.  They don’t get it absolutely perfect the first go ‘round.  They love to goof off as much as we do.

They’re human. 

And so are we.  So fail! Fail brilliantly!  Because the important thing about any art is the act of making it.  It brings us closer to ourselves, closer to our destinies, closer to our audience.  And closer to our own humanity.

And doing so invites the perfection we desire.

Oremus pro invicem,

~ Mikaela

What are your daily writing habits?