I don't care! I love it!

“Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped […] your whole life, and it is the main obstacle between you and a shitty first draft.” - Anne Lamott

In this essay, paper dorks, I will explore how toxic positivity and perfectionism are actually demented cousins who lean on each other to thrive…and both are mean little saboteurs of your creativity. You actually don’t have to sit with these cousins. Boundaries are best.

Note: I will also be exploring themes around body image and social pressure, so choose your path with that in mind, dear reader.

Some of the most consistent (and justified) angst that people bring to me in DMs, workshops, comments is about how the fear of not liking what they create prevents them from creating at all. I don’t know if this is unique to American (or western?) culture, but I do know that it’s a socially constructed pressure that impacts many of us - so much so that it’s present in most creative spaces. And what’s socially constructed can always be torn asunder.1 Let’s tear it asunder.

In the popular discourse around confronting perfectionism, especially the kind that prohibits creative expression, I often see the counter stance hinging on one’s skill and ability to learn to love everything one makes. "Don’t like a page? Get that critical voice out of your head, tell yourself a positive affirmation (I am quite confident that I have offered this advice). You made this, so - like you - it’s worthy of love!” The idea seems to be that if you teach yourself how to feel happy with everything you make, the perfectionism will bounce off to another playground along with all that’s blocking you from trying to create. Thou must never, ever speak ill of one’s little art baby. And if thou doest, thou must not love thineself enough.

So, listen. I am not dogging this approach, not really. If this speaks to you, great! You can quit reading now. For me, it doesn’t work. It feels binary, as if the only two options are to be either blocked by perfectionism OR to never allow myself a critical thought about anything I make. I think we are messier than that, and capable of much more.

When I was thinking about this while brushing my teeth this morning, I was also looking at my bare arms. I have a nuanced relationship with my arms. On the one hand (heh heh), my arms do everything I need them to, and they hold the tattoos that tell the story of my life. I mean heck, they were currently in use for tooth brushing. On the other hand, they are a point of vulnerability. As a fat girl (and as a grown woman), the persistent messaging I have received from society about my arms is that they are actually wrong and bad, better covered. I don’t hate my arms. And, if I’m being honest, I can’t truly say that I always love the way my arms look. Stick with me. This is not about body shame or even succumbing to absurd beauty standards. Let’s be resilient together right now.

The very human truth is that my feelings about how my arms look are, no matter how informed and empowered I am, impacted by social conditioning. I will be in an active relationship with unlearning this conditioning for probably the rest of my life. At one point in my fat liberation journey, when I was more on the “body positivity” path, I thought my work was to push push push until I only have feelings of admiration and appreciation for my body’s visual presentation. Feeling anything less than in love with the way my body looks would be a failure, would be me acting against my values, would be disempowered and low self-esteem sad. The options became either hate my body or love my body.

Over time, and through critical thinking and deeper political understanding of what “liberation” can actually look like, and yes, journaling, I have come to know that loving myself is so much deeper than how I feel at any particular moment about this body, which is transcribed with both wild freedom and social conditioning. Sometimes I say “my body is beautiful, no matter what they say.” More often these days, I say “who cares what my body looks like.” And I’m telling you, THAT feels more wildly free than a constant inner dialogue about whether or not I am sufficiently positive about my bare arms.2

I want to be very clear: I don’t hate my body. I don’t have time for that. I’ve been unlearning all of the behaviors that came along with that internalized shame for a lifetime, and going back is not an option. No matter how social conditioning shapes how I feel about my arms, my thick calves, my belly (all changing so much with age, btw), I am devoted to this body. My body. I have a body. I am alive. That is the gift. I don’t care what my body looks like; I love it.

Instead of trying to talk myself in to loving a page that I actually don’t like at all, I practice a version of radical acceptance. “I don’t like this page. Oh, well. I don’t care!” And now that I realize my creative process is resilient enough to handle the truth, I am able to explore what I don’t like about the page. Sure, a typo or the lettering qot squashed. And also, this other color combination would have been better. How can I tweek this layout to like it more? What part of me is missing from this page? Did my voice get subsumed by someone else’s creative voice? What is my creative voice? This is all so much more liberating to my creative process than “I don’t like this page, but that’s probably because I have low self esteem and am failing at loving myself. Might as well go back to the perfectionism that keeps me from creating in the first place.” If this cycle sounds familiar to you, you can break free.

What I really want for all of us is a set of creative practices that feel like buddies and not bullies. We simply don’t have time for that.

Ask me how this applies to being a good neighbor…but only if you have a few more hours.

I love us, whether we love every page or not. Go forth and create. Make a mess. Get out your shitty first draft.

My creative process is resilient enough for me to critically engage with what I make; it’s okay to not like everything I make.

What fuels perfectionism and toxic positivity in my creative life? What would it feel like to break free from that binary? How might I do that?

Look at the sketch books of artists you love. Notice how many times they draw and redraw the same image. Examine their work across their creative career and notice how their voice evolves through iteration.