Hello, dear perfectionist,

It's nice to meet you. Though we're just getting to know each other, I can see that we already have a lot in common. We both make art. We both have excellent taste. And we're both attacked by that little bit of self loathing when we're nearing the end of a project. Uh oh, it's not turning out right. Should I just scrap the whole thing?

Perfectionism isn’t an innately bad thing; your brain wants to make sure you do your best and that you continue to live without uncomfortable feelings like embarrassment. The problem, though, is that a lot of perfectionists, myself included, tend to stop in the middle of something when it doesn’t seem to be going well. From my experience, the logic is that if I don’t finish something, nobody can prove that I did it poorly. This is flawed logic, though. In order to get good at anything, you have to do it poorly - otherwise we’d all be speaking 20 languages and playing every instrument under the sun.

If you take a look at the comments under my YouTube videos, you'll see that there is a healthy mix of praise and criticism. I am a good teacher, but my mic is facing the wrong way (it took me an embarrassingly long time to figure this out). It was helpful, but I said the word “vowel” instead of “consonant”. This video would be amazing if I didn't move my arms around like that. These sorts of comments would have mortified me a couple of years ago, but one of the biggest things I’ve learned since I started making videos is that I’m allowed to make mistakes. These things are so tiny in the grand scheme of things and the most important thing is that I made something.

I am in no way saying that you’re a bad artist or that you're making a ton of mistakes (again, I’m just meeting you), but the best thing you can is let yourself be... is bad. Write something silly or stupid. Give yourself permission to write the worst song you’ve ever written. Just finish something.

Love, April