My last two posts have been musings on the book The Creative Act by Rick Rubin. As soon as I clicked “publish” for my latest post about four reasons for my own low creative self-esteem, I realized an incredible irony. I was unsure whether to post it and this hesitancy ironically revealed a fifth reason: Perfectionism.
I did not want to post the blog post until I knew it was perfect. Eventually, I had looked it over enough times and was starting to grow tired of working on it, I decided it was good enough. Perhaps not perfect in my mind, but good enough.
This is most definitely a reason why my creativity is lower than it needs to be. I am striving for perfection when I should more often strive for good enough. Besides, progress can be incremental. It does not have to be all or nothing from the start. But tell that to my brain, or my anxiety. They probably won’t listen.
Instead of going back to my previous post to edit in the fifth reason, I wanted to keep it in its original format; its own blog post. To me this is perfect symbolism. I write a blog post about the reasons I don’t create not realizing that the reason I almost did not publish it is not one of those reasons. My perfectionism. Brilliant.
I am also enjoying writing several blog posts about each book I read. It seems the more I write, the more ideas come and their insights grow in meaning to me. Each blog post prompts the next one. This blog post for example, would not exist if I had not published my previous one. My creativity grew because of my earlier work even though I perceived it as imperfect. I love that. I wanted to become more creative as a result of this Reading Challenge and here I am, a week after reading a book on creativity, already being more creative. This is a good sign of things to come.
Messy Bun Book Lover
(Originally posted on Mar. 6, 2025)
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