On Perfection

by Doug

I'm an artist that has been working digitally for close to a decade. This means that most all of my work (penciling, inking, coloring, etc) is done on my computer. You can look up "Doug Hills cartoonist" on Youtube, and find an interview I did recently where you can see what my process looks like.

It's a great way to work. There's minimal mess, I'm helping the environment, and its the ultimate in mistake correcting: if I screw up, I paraphrase Nike and Just Undo It.

Here's the thing, though: I realize I've become a bit of a perfectionist. When you can correct every little mistake, you begin to tolerate mistakes less. I realized this as I worked on a sketch for a contest, and all I had was a ballpoint pen.

Which meant no undo.

Which meant every mistake would be there for everyone to see.

Was my finished piece perfect? Nope. I almost didn't enter the piece, because in my head I felt I could do better than that. But, I let it go. I had to.

And you know what? It was fine. The sky didn't come down. I wasn't deemed a failure. Hell, I even got a vote, which meant someone thought my ballpoint drawn, "mistake-ridden" piece of art was the best of the bunch.

Where am I going with all this?

I realized as I reflected on this unacheiveable pursuit of perfection, that I was doing this in my role of stay-at-home dad as well.

Much like Phil talked about in his article this week, I too have had to deal with juggling work with house work, parenthood, and spending time with my wife (or all three of us). And while one would think that would get easier as my daughter got older, I found that it was actually getting worse.

That doesn't make much sense.

My problem was thinking that I could perform all of those roles equally and successfully. I felt that I could (or rather * should*) cover everything I'm supposed to do in day with no problem at all.

In other words, I was trying to be perfect. And that's not possible. Well, not without keeping some semblance of sanity, it's not.

If anything, I'm sure the opposite had been acheived: I'm behind on my projects, the house isn't all that clean, and I haven't spent the time I planned to with my wife and daughter. Oh, and I'm stressed and not happy.

Whoops.

So what am I to do? Well, if my imperfect ballpoint pen drawing taught me anything, it's that I need to let go of this pursuit if perfection, and just do the best I can with the time I have.

Does that mean there will be times where I won't get a page done? Yes.

Does that mean there will be times where the girls will have to have mommy-daughter time so I *can* get a page done? Yes.

Will this work? I don't know. What I do know is that trying to be perfect hasn't worked, thus far. So, why not try something different? After all, it really is okay to be imperfect.

Much less futile, too.

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