What has your perfection killed today?
Recently, Mac Miller released his second posthumous album, Ballonerism. I haven’t gotten around to listening to the album in full (I have my own thoughts on posthumous works), but I did watch the animated short on Amazon Prime. It was weird, it was provoking, it was sad, but most of all, it was creative.
Even if I couldn’t understand it, I could tell that this was art. It’s the same feeling I had walking through the halls of the MoMA or watching the Alvin Ailey dancers glide across the stage. Each piece, every movement, telling its own story without having to beg or plead to be seen for what it was.
And there I was, standing there with my hands pressed to the glass. The consumer, dying to break onto the other side and be the creative. Wondering, what truly separates us?
Currently, I have the darkest cloud over my eyes. I’m experiencing the biggest case of writer’s block that I’ve had in a while, with no real signs of an end. While essay titles and themes still flow from my brain into my workbook, they just won’t make it to the digital pages. It’s almost as if they’re in protest of coming alive. They just sit there at my fingertips, refusing, stirring up a mental revolution.
The original intention of this newsletter, before I became so caught up in my own head, was to share what I was seeing, feeling, becoming in real time. It was never meant to be polished, just real.
So as I wrestle back and forth with the blockage, it genuinely has me asking myself the question, are you even a creative bro?
I’d like to think so.
I mean, it’s literally what I get paid to do. Senior Creative Strategist – it’s literally in the title, so I’d sure hope that I’m living up to the standards of the job. But outside of a paycheck, am I designed to be a creator? That, I’m still figuring out.
In the three years of building this platform, I’ve tried to be a lot of different things to a lot of different people – none of them myself. I started out going the lifestyle content creator route but quickly realized that wasn’t going to work. I’ve dabbled in the YouTube podcasting direction but haven’t given that much of a fighting chance, to be very honest. Instead, I leaned into the Substack writer route, which, as we can see, is kinda working out.
In many ways, it was the path of least resistance: writing comes pretty easy to me, I’d like to believe that I’m pretty good at it, and like some people have an eye, I guess I have a voice. Even if that voice is mainly an internal dialogue that eats at me until I plop it on a page, in a note, or a voice memo.
Pretty much, I just write to get the voices to be quiet and behave.
But I’m a terrible “creative.”
I can’t tell you my favorite book, filmmaker, musician, artist—hell, even writer. I don’t have a favorite content creator, sparingly watch YouTube, and am so out of the cultural loop it’s kinda sad. I don’t even spend much time acknowledging the art of others. I appreciate it, I support it, but I don’t actually consume it as critically as I’d like to. Mainly because it always leads me into a spiral of comparison.
When I spend too much time wading in the waters of others’ creativity, it causes me to question the validity of my own. This is amazing, this is beautiful, and I… I could never come up with something like this.
Perfectionism has been the thief of every idea that should have been. It’ll swoop in and rob me of the confidence and clarity to create mid-keystroke. But it also pushes me to never settle for the first draft or give up on an idea that I know is really good. I hate that hoe with a passion—and yet, it’s both my curse and my remedy.
I know that’s not what art wants. Art doesn’t ask to be perfect; it just asks to be made.
It asks for vulnerability. To take a leap of faith and let go of the fear of judgment. To take off the mask and recognize that we are good enough without owing anyone an explanation. It asks for rebelliousness. To reject the notion that it must fit into neat boxes or conform to certain standards. That idea just wants an opportunity to live on the other side. The freedom to be whatever it needs to be to whoever needs it. It doesn’t ask for flawless execution but movement without hesitation. It asks for us to stand ten toes down in the things that make us unique, and different, and weird.
That’s all art’s ever asked of us—to show up as we are, with what we have. To lean into the imperfection and trust that somewhere in the cracks, something meaningful will emerge.
Over the next few weeks (months? years?) I’ll be taking the time to be more intentional about my creativity. Spending time as both creator and consumer. Letting the art of others move me out of darkness and into inspiration. I’m investing in investigating new words and other worlds in genres outside of my own, diving into discographies and catalogues with no intention other than letting the melody’s wash over me, and creating a syllabus around creatives like James Baldwin, Kehinde Wiley, and Tyler the Creator who’ve mastered their craft and left the lessons for others to build on their foundation.
What has your perfection killed today? What ideas, moments, or possibilities have been stifled by the need for things to be flawless? Maybe it’s time to let some of those things breathe and see what they become when set free.
