The word ‘perfection’ and I do not go together in the same sentence, quite the opposite. But the pursuit of one kept me from hitting ‘publish’ for far too long. The biggest lesson I have learned in the last few years is that failing to write ‘anything’ is far worse than writing something wrong. This post (and every post hereafter) is my acknowledgment and acceptance that it is okay to post grammatically incorrect and semantically incoherent thoughts.
Being a child was easy. I probably knew half as may words as I do now, but I wasn’t overthinking it. When I created my first Blogspot more than 13 years ago in that tiny, dark cubical in a ‘cyber cafe’ for 20 Rupees an hour (~25 cents/ hr at that time), I had no time to waste ‘thinking.’ Every second in the computer when my fingers were not typing was money lost in that third world country. Then slowly crept in adulthood, with all its embarrassment, second-guessing my self-consciousness. Between making the blog private and limiting dozens of ‘idea’ just as ‘ideas’ on the notepad, I guess I was looking at the wrong purpose the whole time.
Now when I take a step back and look at it – I can see how I deferred writing anything at every opportunity. I probably spent more time researching for ‘best domain register or a hosting provider’ than putting anything up there. I probably spent hours on my road trips documenting and taking pictures and zero minutes to write about it. ‘Later this weekend,’ ‘at the end of the semester,’ ‘in the summer break,’ and all those millions of deferral – they were not the lack of time. They were merely the quest of writing a perfect article, creating a flawless blog – that perfection that was never mine to begin with and always seems to be spinning further away.
Dwelling in these thoughts for months and years, what I was looking for was not a great website design, an ideal time, or a wholesome opening article. It was the courage to be wrong, strength to be myself, and the acceptance that ‘future me is not always going to like what present me thinks, but that is okay.’ I recently came across a Chinese proverb – “The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.” With that realization, this is my pledge to myself – to complete those incomplete thoughts, to be comfortable to present my often flawed logic, ambiguous and run-on sentences, and the embarrassing perceptions of present me.