The imperfectly perfect diary
My eyes lit up as I unwrapped my birthday present in Feb 2020 — It was a diary. What’s special about a diary, you might wonder. In this copy/paste/undo/redo era, writing on paper still fascinates me. But, I’m a teeny-weeny bit fussy about picking a diary 😅:
I like my paper blank. Lines restrict me.
Make it hardbound but no leather.
I want my pages extra soft. Who likes the feel of rough pages anyway?
Ivory is better than white.
The ideal paper size is somewhat between A4 and A5. The ideal number of pages is somewhere between 200-300.
Preference for outer cover: plain black, beige, peach, and brown..in that order 😉.
The diary my husband got was alll of the above. It was perfect.
I treasured it. So much so that I couldn’t get myself to use it! I was saving it for something ‘special’.
Maybe I’ll write poems in it, exclusively. Maybe it’ll be about life wisdom for my teenage daughter! Maybe I’ll write only about our travel experiences.
My perfect diary was too fancy to be wasted on random thoughts…or so I thought.
None of those ‘special’ writing plans materialized.
As silly as it sounds, it took me two years to pick my favorite pencil (yes, I’m fussy about pencils too 😅) and start writing in my perfect diary. It took me two years to realize that I better use it for anything and everything than something special!
A rewind to childhood.
When we were in primary school, we had this concept of rough and neat notebooks for each subject.
Teachers expected students to do the classwork in the rough notebook. As the teacher wrote on the blackboard, we would copy it all in our rough notebooks. We had to be fast. Otherwise, the board would be erased to make way for the next lesson. Writing fast was messy, for most of us.
Then there was homework, a tidier, non-messier version of classwork copied to the neat notebook in the comfort of home without any rush. It had beautiful handwriting. We’d put our best foot (work) forward. This is the work we showed our teachers and others.
I understand the noble intention behind the rough-neat concept.
Teachers wanted us to revise at home what was taught in the classroom. They didn’t want to waste their time correcting the mistakes kids could correct themselves if they revisited their own work.
I’m sure we benefitted from this practice. At the same time, it also left us with the idea of showing only your refined work to the world.
It’s the bang opposite of the idea behind a minimum viable product/idea.
The latter pushes you to expose yourself to the world and learn from your mistakes asap. The former protects you from learning from mistakes and feedback.
To rise to our imaginary standards, we sometimes keep on refining things that don’t even matter. Worse, we entirely miss things that are crucial to perfect in order to succeed. Be it art, writing, music, juggling…that thing you’re passionate about.
Reminds me of one of the most memorable performances of Phoebe Buffay, one of the most jovial characters from the popular sitcom Friends.
Phoebe was an amateur singer/songwriter with poor rhythm and guitar skills. That didn’t stop her from confidently performing a song called Smelly Cat in a packed cafe.
People appreciate imperfections. It’s probably an even better way to introduce your work to others:
You don’t need to write well enough before you start sharing your writing.
You don’t need to play well enough before you start playing with better players.
You don’t need to run fast enough before you start training with faster runners.
You don’t need to be the best singer/gamer/cook/etc. before you start sharing your skill and knowledge with others.
I learned this from my black diary, which by the way, finished recently. It turns out it wasn’t exclusively about poems, life learnings, or travel logs. It has a li’l bit of all this and more.
It embraced my random thoughts and the occasional poet in me. It captured some special days and some mundane ones. It embraced moments of happiness and moments of sadness. Most of all, it embraced imperfectness. My black diary turned out to be imperfectly perfect.
In fact, this very post is inspired by its first entry.
If your strive for perfectness is holding you back, it’s time to put not-your-best foot forward. You’ll learn to run faster sooner than if you keep trying to perfect your first step.