DBRT 010: Quality and the role of perfection

Do you ever feel like nothing you do is worth anything? Like every attempt to be what you want falls apart? I do, sometimes. Like right now.

 

I don’t want to be a downer. In fact, one of the main reasons why I’ve become more active online is because I want to do what I can to help people feel better about themselves. To find something small they can control. To be kinder to the “weird” parts of themselves. To connect with others.

 

But I’m not feeling that way today.

 

Today I feel like I can’t do anything. I have so many ideas (so. many. ideas.) and yet when I try to make them happen, everything falls apart. Well, that’s not entirely true. It fell apart today, and it’s more likely to fall apart when I’m working by myself.

 

Important context:

I don’t think I’ve ever been truly happy with my hair. It frustrates the ever-loving hell out of me no matter what I do. I’ve only had a truly good haircut once in my life, and the stylist responsible left the industry later that year!!!

 

Today I tried to style my hair, and it just feels/looks awful. I have no idea what I’m doing, and I put in so much work this time. It’s crunchy and tangled and messy.

 

I wanted to take some pictures and videos playing dress up and doing rope. I’m in the phase of life where I’m trying so many things. I don’t really know what my path is or who I’ll end up being. Everything I do is new, and learning is an exhausting and humbling experience. Maybe that’s a way to describe it. I feel very humble right now.

 

Anyways, I wanted to set up some lights and make something really nice. And it just wasn’t working. Nothing about it was working. And being the photographer, model, stylist, and director all while working with a real camera (which I barely know how to use) is very humbling. So, I gave up. Master might help me later, but idk  I just want to wallow in these feelings right now.

 

That doesn’t even begin to get into the icky feelings I have about my body right now. I won’t bore you with the details since they’re pretty run of the mill body issues. Still, they can knock the wind out of you pretty fast when looking at yourself in a viewfinder and not liking what you see.

Quality

I’ve been thinking about quality a lot lately. What makes something quality? Care. The only box you can check that guarantees something will be high quality is if the people making/doing it, care about it. This is not my original idea, by the way. Bliss Foster totally blew my mind with this philosophy in his video “What Does “High Quality” Mean in High Fashion?”. I highly recommend watching some of his videos if you are interested in clothing, art, or design.

 

I want things in my life to be of quality. I want my relationships, my clothing, etc. to be quality. I want to care deeply about most of the things in my life. Sometimes living in North American culture and society feels like living in a world where quantity matters far more than quality. More followers, more money, more clothing, more makeup, more time, more influence. I don’t really want “more”, I want better.  Deeper meaning. I want to be a quality person. I want to spend quality time. I want to do things that make me feel good, that feel important and valuable to me and the people around me.

 

Recently I came into possession of a vintage Coach bag made of leather and brass. I cleaned the leather, conditioned the smooth exterior, brushed the suede, and polished the brass. It didn’t come out looking perfect, but every time I have worn that bag I have felt such appreciation and gratitude. Carrying around something that feels and looks like it was deeply cared about by the people designing and making it has such a transformative impact.

 

I’m a relatively young person and have lived my entire life in a world of online shopping and ruthless convenience. As I have grown up, I’ve watched the world around me deteriorate. Quality falling to the side for the sake of padding the bottom line and providing the world with *more*, of exactly what I could not tell you. Things were purchased and discarded, and while they may have brought me temporary joy or relief in the moment, I don’t actually remember many of the *things* that took up space in my life. What I *do* remember are the experiences I had with other people, the things they taught me, and the ways in which I have grown over the years.

 

So much value is put on learning more things, reading more articles, more headlines, watching more videos. But absorbing so much material leaves very little room for learning anything. I want to do things that stimulate my brain that make me feel excited and fulfilled. Topics I can chew on before dissolving into all of the background noise in my life. Things that make me feel alive and like a person inside and out. That I can apply to my life and improve the lives of myself and the people I care about.

 

I want to be a pillar of integrity online. Sometimes it feels like people are saying a lot of things without contributing anything meaningful or having much substance underneath what they say. It’s like the tabloids versus national geographic. I want to be the national geographic of the space that I occupy. I want to be something meaningful and authentic in a space where it is common for inauthenticity, caricature, and performance to be the norm. It’s about fantasy in most cases, and my life isn’t a fantasy. So I don’t want to pretend that it is.

 

An important distinction I have been contemplating is the role of perfection in all of this. Quality does not equal perfection, because perfection does not exist. Not in this version of reality at least.

 

I’ve spent so much of my life pursuing perfection, or more accurately, being paralyzed by the fear of not attaining perfection. There are so many things in my life I haven’t done, that I haven’t said because I was afraid that they wouldn’t be perfect. I wasn’t chasing perfection. I wasn’t chasing anything. I was standing still. In fear. I still find myself doing that, but I hope over time I can learn to approach things differently and pursue quality over perfection. That’s a much more realistic goal.

 

This perfection paralysis has stopped me from actually pursuing rigging in the past. Sure, I’ve messed around with rope a few times, but I would always get discouraged by my lack of skill. Maybe that isn’t the right way to view this process. Maybe I can try to focus instead on enjoying myself, enjoying the time I spend with others, and building myself up over time. After all, I worry so much because I care very deeply. And only through deeply caring can I make something of quality.

 

 

 

Cutting room floor:

• Coach bag, learning to take care of my clothing, taking care of what I have and what I can control rather than pursuing new things that won’t fix me or fix the world. Not buying a solution because no solution can be bought.
• Quality does not mean perfection because perfection doesn’t exist.
• It was empty calories. There was nothing to chew on. Nothing satisfying. Nothing satiating.
• Pillars of integrity / being a net positive in the lives of others

This writing is part of a series called “Diary of a Baby Rope Top” by Kajira Blue, the rest of which can be found at TheDuchy.com/blogs.

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