The real enemy?

You know the phrase, "Good is the enemy of great"? I used to really like it. It validated my choices to work when everyone else played. It made sense in my black-and-white world where there was perfection or failure and no in-between.

But as my pursuit of the artistic and inspired — specifically my attempts at creative writing — began to lose steam, and my goals began to look like steep, stormy, unconquerable mountains, the above phrase joined a list of others that the voice in my head used to flog me.

I finally came to a complete stop under the weight of perfectionism. The twisted basis of which is that nothing is ever good enough, but you should totally keep striving anyway. I guess until you crack up.

Here's my point. Good may indeed be the enemy of great for people who may need to be challenged and encouraged to reach their potential and give their best. However, I've come to believe that for the perfectionist, perfection is the enemy of great. Heck, perfection is the enemy of good, because at some point, you stop doing anything you can't do perfectly, which is pretty much everything, as we are all simply human.

So, here's to trying to do something good, rather than doing nothing at all.

The beginning

I traveled to Santa Fe in July 2009 in search of my first leisurely, restful, non-Type-A-go-go-go vacation. And that's exactly what I got. It was easily a place to restore in many ways.

It had been a tough year leading up to that trip, and when I returned, I didn't want to lose what I had gained in terms of peace, relaxation and creative inspiration. I made it a goal to recapture those feelings every week with a Saturday activity that nourished mind, body, soul or some combination of those.

At first, that was going to be the topic of this blog — a chronicling of my attempts. Something like Julie & Julia meets Georgia O'Keeffe. For about two months, I maintained the effort, but I never blogged about it, because I felt like it was going to read as "Dear Diary: Today, I walked barefoot in the grass and listened to the birds sing ..." Not that those aren't great things to experience, but to read about? Eh.

However, the Saturday activities did start the unraveling of my "false self" (that person you become to deal with everything in your life without crumbling), and began to put me back in touch with who I really am. So, now, I don't know exactly what direction this blog will take, but I think it's going to be about the journey to fully release my personal creativity.

I'm a writer, something I have alternately embraced, pursued, feared, hidden from, wrestled with, been tortured by and deeply fulfilled by. Lately, I've been hanging out in the fear and hiding categories. But in a funny way, the fear is beginning to be about not wanting to look back and wonder "what if?" What if I had just tried? It's time, in my mind, to follow Nike's seemingly ancient admonition to "just do it."

So here goes ...