Perfect

Let’s be honest, this little essay was never going to be perfect. But I tried to convince myself it would be if only the house was perfectly quiet. If it weren’t for the muffled sounds of talking, I argued with myself, I could write something revolutionary. How can I be expected to complete such a task under anything less than perfect conditions?

This is one of the ways Steven Pressfield would say Resistance rears its ugly head. There’s something in me that will search for any excuse not to do the work, unless the work is slothing on a couch watching Star Wars for the four hundred and thirty-second time.

That part of me goes into overdrive whenever the work involves trying something uncomfortable.

Working on an estimate for a walkway I’ve built a thousand times? No problem. Working on a proposal for a project that I’m particularly excited about? Let’s pull out all the stops in putting that off as long as humanly possible.

Most of the time I’m aware of it and keep going anyway. But sometimes that Resistance wins.

It almost won this morning. I didn’t feel like writing because the conditions weren’t to my liking. Instead of admitting defeat and taking a scroll through Instagram, I tried an experiment. What if I wrote with headphones on and classical music playing? What would happen?

Well, Bach helped me get this piece together. Perfect? No, it was never going to be. But it’s done.