Perfectionism and Courage

It's been about 1.5 years since I last made a proper blog post on this website.

I find writing fulfilling in and of itself and have enjoyed it all my life. Only a very small tip of my writing iceberg gets publicly posted. I started blogging to share some of my best insights on subjects I am passionate about: tech, mindfulness, and philosophy. It's nice to be able to share a link to my insights about a topic rather than talk or type out a lot of detail multiple times to different people. The posts are often useful enough for future me to refer back to and find value in.

I also like the feeling of accomplishment of giving something helpful away on the internet, crafted in my own vision and free from algorithmic influence. I like it when others do the same. It makes the internet a better place. I appreciate the feedback DMs I get from others who found my work useful.

Perfectionism

Given the above motivations, when I started I decided that each post should be a polished and timeless document that people would come back to and still find useful for many years to come. This is in contrast to ephemeral social media - that type of post I reserve for micro-blogging on Mastodon. Since my last blog post, I have continued to make dozens of Mastodon posts. So if I found real blogging fulfilling, why did I stop?

All this time, I have largely blamed my lack of blogging on becoming a father and no longer having enough time or energy to invest in longer posts. But actually, I still write privately because I enjoy it, and I do have the time. At the back of my mind, I always knew what the real hindrances were-primarily a common blocker to publishing creative work: perfectionism.

It's the fear that my work isn't "perfect" enough for anyone else to see it.

Courage

Last week, the topic of "courage" came up during a discussion at my local philosophy school. It had me thinking. There are plenty of things that I do that other people seem to think look like "courage," but internally they never felt like courage to me.

Someone during the discussion mentioned a definition for courage along the lines of:

Doing what is right, and not doing what is not right, despite adversity

Someone else suggested, during the week, to:

Try to do something with 5% or 10% more courage compared to before

This helped me realize why many of the so-called "courageous things people pointed out I did" usually did not feel like courage internally: They actually felt too easy for me. I wasn't facing any real difficulty, discomfort, or resistance-not even really 5% discomfort compared with before. Usually I just had a feeling the thing might be good to do, calculated the situation to gain confidence, executed, and reaped any reward (or ate the loss).

On the flip side, there are many things I do that required me to overcome difficulty, discomfort, and resistance internally, and yet nobody noticed them. These are what felt like courage to me.

And guess what? It took courage for me to write this post and publish it publicly on my site. Even if it was just 10% more courage than before, I faced something. I finally faced my perfectionism, and if you are reading this, that means today I won. I wrote and published despite the doubts about whether it meets some ever-increasing internal or external standard, along with resisting temptations to resort to the latest AI to help polish it up (I didn't... where's the fun, growth, and courage in that? 😜).

It feels good to be back

If it weren't for the insight and courage to face the discomfort of perfectionism, who knows how many months or years could have gone by without another post on my website? All the while, me missing out on the fulfillment and growth that blogging brings me, and others missing out on the value of my work.

I'm looking forward to the future of my site, with the potential to evolve it into a delightful digital garden. I may pivot it around a greater diversity of post types rather than strictly around polished videos, essays, and tutorials. Either way... it doesn't need to be perfect.