Some thoughts, if I may, about workplace mistakes and nail painting...

I had a mishap at work this past Friday, or rather, some issues I'd perhaps overlooked the possibility of came to light. At 4pm on Friday, as I say, before a three day weekend, and other departments are needed to help sort things out. In fairness to myself, I'm also who figured out what the issues are and made a plan to correct the situation, but I still got to have an uncomfortable conversation with my immediate boss and so forth.

The worst part of the whole thing -- aside from the frustration that I can't be working on fixing it right now which may or may not tie into my theme here, is that I have taken a blow to my self-image. Or maybe not that so much as my self-expectations! I shouldn't make work mistakes, particularly not ones that will inconvenience others. Not even mistakes of simply not being able to see all possible outcomes of a change, which is the case here. I have, in short, failed to be perfect.

So about nail painting. I did not grow up painting my nails; I'm pretty sure I was an adult the first time I did it, and still scarcely then. But recently I've kind of gotten into it, and here's the thing: I'm not good at it. Go figure! But it's almost become a mental exercise for me, because it's a thing I almost certainly won't get perfect and yet I display them in public. (Well, my fingernails. I don't wear open-toed shoes out of the house much, so only my family is subjected to my even sloppier toenail painting.) Admittedly, I keep my fingernails pretty subtle most of the time and who stares at such things? But it's still an exercise for me in keeping my standards reasonable and having a little compassion for myself.

Where else could I exercise this? The truth is, the hardest times are things that only I am aware of, because, cliche though it is, we are our own worst critics. Or rather than speak for you, I'll say it's true for me. Posting a few old bits of flash fiction to AO3 wasn't as hard as I thought because I've got so much distance I can sort of shrug it off. Sort of. But perfectionism is simply the enemy of producing art of any kind, or at least, letting anybody else near it... ever. It's the enemy of learning, too. There's a quote from Adventure Time (of which I've seen very little, I just saw the quote somewhere) along the lines of "Sucking at something is the first step towards being sort of good at something." Nobody much wants to do something they suck at, but perfectionism tells you you will always suck at it, which is a filthy lie. I mean, probably, if you stick at whatever it is! Perfectionism will also never let you believe you've moved on to being sort of good at something, because everything short of perfect is, well, suck.

Do I have a point here beyond perfectionism is bad? I don't know that that's even really my point. There's no question that perfectionism has also resulted in work that is better than it might have been, or at least, I'm open to that idea. I've had people tell me "well, I didn't mean THAT much" (or THAT fast, or whatever) about work and it feels good, and I know that going beyond at least to some degree came out of that voice in my head saying "NOT GOOD ENOUGH" (which now sounds like Jim Mulaney's impression of Mick Jagger saying "NOT FUNNY" but anyway let's move on.) But... isn't there something on the positive side of the perfectionism coin? What do we call that? Pride in work? I'm not sure, but the determination to do the best job you can with the skills and tools and environment you actually have seems like a good thing and I would like to know the word for it, even if it's something long and German. But anything more than that, as they say, is folly.

Now to see if I can make myself actually save and post this...