We recently had an “annual walk-through” of our apartment — a survey of what’s broken, which will apparently get fixed sometime in the next few weeks. I say “annual walk-through” with skepticism because we moved in less than a year ago and the landlords don’t often seem concerned with our needs. They’re a mysterious, wealthy family that runs some hemp business up north, as far as I can tell from public records. And they communicate with us through an apathetic-at-best property management company. They took three months to fix our A/C in the summer. Landlords! Can’t live with ‘em, would love to live without ‘em.
So these handymen show up at 8:30 on a weekday, three hours ahead of time, just as I was making coffee á la Winnie the Pooh (shirt, no pants). We told them to come back later, the Pooh hasn’t had honey yet. At 11:27, one guy visibly hovered outside our front door. These were the most prompt handymen I’d ever met.
As soon as the clock struck 30, they came in and I had to walk them through everything that was broken, a little off, cracked or weird in the unit. Room by room, I rattled them off:
The sink pedestal is detached from the wall because it wasn’t well glued and I like to lean on it when I brush my teeth. The little plastic loop that keeps the cord of the blinds anchored to the wall came loose. Paint is chipping in the bedroom. There’s a mysterious hole in the ceiling of our closet, which Lawson patched over with an unopened letter from his car insurance company. It makes me laugh every time I look up at it.
Oh, and the bedroom door won’t shut completely, but that’s just in the summer (the wood swells, I think? I explain in Spanish). An outlet gives out just as I put a kettle to boil. The front door once swung open during a windy day, even though it was half-locked. The bathroom tile, mismatched and so evidently applied in a hurry, needs recaulking. The ceiling fan light doesn’t work, but we’ve grown used to it. Thing by thing, I pointed it all out, amazed by my comprehensive recollection of these shortcomings.
Of course, there’s a parallel there. Because I spend a lot of time doing the same thing in my mind. I’m slinking around in the metaphorical attic, remarking to some invisible handymen with a notebook all the cracks, imperfections and worn-out bits. There’s an odd-shaped habit here, and I’m not entirely sure when it appeared, but I’ve gotten used to it being there. Here’s a well-worn thought pattern, a poster of someone I admire glued with a bit of psychological gum — to spruce up the place. Don’t mind that pile of junk in the corner; it’s just a few memories I tend to revisit. A few worries are buried under the floorboards. There might be a leak in the ceiling.
There’s a bit in Mae Martin’s new Netflix comedy special, “SAP,” in which Martin talks about how embarrassing it is to be an adult. How embarrassing is it that we, adults, have rooms? We have these little spaces we call ours, and we decorate them to make them feel like ours, they say. And then we tell people about our rooms, and show them our rooms. Martin goes on, describing adulthood as this perpetual show-and-tell: we all have a weird collection of snow globes, our memories and tastes and opinions, that makes us feel like an individual. And then we go around showing each other our weird snow globes, and looking at other people’s globes. It’s embarrassing!
I’m at a particular point in adulthood — mid-twenties — where lots of things feel weirdly embarrassing. I’m not 22, an age at which any sign of competence is wildly impressive. And I’m not in my thirties, which is when the brain lobes finally get comfy and when, I presume, everything becomes chill. I know the readers over 30 are laughing at me right now: embarrassing! I am what seems a perfectly average age but also expected to do lots of things that determine the fruition or fruitlessness of my whole life. People consider me so young! And yet old enough to know better, to make something of myself.
Most of the time I feel like a fugitive. Once my parents stopped scolding me, the universe itself became my parent and now when I wake up, I’m immediately worried about being…caught. Like, Ugh, I didn’t get as much done yesterday as I should have, and now I’ll never recover and my life will slowly unravel. Or, maybe that comment I made during book club rubbed someone the wrong way and it means I’m incapable of long-lasting friendship. And: it’s been a minute since I called my siblings, I hope they’re not mad at me (but they might be)! The little anxieties on a carousel all day.
This is the life of a recovering perfectionist. To be clear, I’m not one of those people who calls themself a perfectionist in job interviews when asked about their weaknesses. I admit this with a good deal of…well, embarrassment. I’m the kind of perfectionist that never considers anything I do good enough (rarely will I think something I made is even good).
My whole life I’ve been told to stop being so hard on myself. Which, sure, yeah, I’d definitely like to unplug the Endless Carousel of Concern. “Stop being so hard on yourself” is a hilarious piece of advice because it’s like telling a drowning person to work on their backstroke. Not now, buddy!
The way I’ve gone about this lifelong mandate is by trying to be more understanding of others, the idea being that self-criticism is an extension of my secret judgment toward others. That wasn’t quite true, because I’m criticizing myself more harshly than I do anyone else. But training myself to grow in patience and grace toward others has at least made me practice the language of compassion.
I write about chronic illness everyday, so flexibility and understanding are necessarily baked into my work. If someone cancels an interview last-minute because their autoimmune condition flared up, that’s totally fine. If I need to email my questions because someone’s long Covid makes it difficult for them to talk for more than a few minutes at a time, I’ll do that. No big deal. It feels normal, under those circumstances, to do the compassionate thing.
But giving myself that softness is trickier. And at this point, frankly, it’s ridiculous. What am I so bloody worried about all the time? Why am I always expecting to be caught and exposed as a fraud? Like a big baby, I live terrified of getting myself in time out. For what?
A couple of weeks ago, I got a voicemail from my drum teacher. I had canceled my lessons two weeks in a row, blaming it on work deadlines and friends being in town. Both were true, but I was also having a perfectionist’s hangover. Learning a new skill is a lot of work, and a perpetual parade of mistakes. (Sometimes I get really existential during my drum lessons and I laugh out loud at the absurdity of trying to smack a stick in the right way.) I had been trying and failing stuff for weeks, and I was just tired of not being good at it.
Well, something awful happened. My teacher saw right through me.
In his voicemail, he said he was sorry if he’d pushed me too hard. And then he said I seem like a perfectionist who wants to show up very prepared for each lesson. My mouth hung wide open as I listened to this man roast me so specifically and accurately. It’s OK, he said. Let’s reschedule, and you just try your best. You’ll never be as practiced as you’d like, but that’s not the point, he said.
He was right, of course, but it took that ~scathing~ message for me to understand my attitude in a larger context. Drumming is supposed to be fun. I started taking lessons over a year ago just because I thought it would be cool to know how to play, and because I wanted a challenge. There’s something about the physicality of certain hobbies, like dancing, sculpting and drumming, that takes me out of my head.
And with my prefrontal cortex finally downloaded, I figured that I need to fail often or get stuck in my high-achiever prison forever. Beginner drumming is most often a gorgeous display of failure. It’s all terrible-sounding beats and discombobulated grooves as I learn to coordinate my limbs.
This newsletter is a version of the same anti-perfection exercise. After all, writing is just trying to smack a stick in an elegant way. When I first got the itch to start it, back in 2021, I got too in my head about it and gave up. In order to publish rummaging, I need to just do it: write something (anything) and send it out into the world, even if it’s not polished, even if it’s way too vulnerable, like this. I can’t think about it too much. Momentum protects me from the quicksand of self-criticism.
My hypothesis is this: the more I let myself make mistakes on small stuff, the easier it will be to let those things go when it really matters.
After the walk-through the other day, I told Lawson, “I think they liked our place.” He laughed, and said, “You’re worried about whether the handymen liked our apartment?” I really was.
Yes, this place is getting old and it’s pretty worn-in and there are a bunch of small issues, but some of them have been here for a long time. We can fix them. Most of the problems don’t bother that much. I promise, the important things work just fine. I promise, it’s still a pretty nice place. Do you like it?
Well. Drat. I relate to this so much. For years I described myself as "self-obsessed, but not self-impressed" as I spent a lot of time in my own head trying to figure out how to best present myself as useful. I keep reminding myself to be more curious than fearful of new things. Gradually getting better at grace for my own perceived failures, focusing on the repeated effort to keep trying than the discouragement of not "getting it" right away. Thank you for your thoughts and I wish you well.
Ok , seriously how did you see into my brain??? I relate so much ... especially the pile of junk in the corner that we shall not mention but absolutely need therapy to sort through .
Haha the rooms .. that made me chuckle . Really it is absurd
Cue little mermaid song here .... “look at this stuff , isn’t it neat.... “
Lol