Day 3: Talk Dirty to Me

Yo, you. Yes, you, reading this right now. Home dawg. (Uh, I promise never to call you that again, k?)

Are you a perfectionist? I get the feeling that many of my readers are, and you might be one too. It's like... we get one life and we'd better make it brilliant, right? I want to move mountains with my one life. I want to own the world. I want to further humanity. I want to take this version of me and optimize myself to the point where I'm doing shit that really matters.

There's only one thing getting in the way. I'm... sigh... human.

I am never ever ever everrrrrrr going to get all my shit together. My genetic code is riddled with so many bugs... so many misplaced semicolons somewhere impossible to spot... I'm fucked on the perfect scale.

And I beat myself up because of it. The dirty things I say to myself feel so normal that I don't even realize how nasty they are.

"You fucked that up hardcore. You should have said this... not that!"

"Omg, that thing failed. That thing FAILED and you can never fix it. And it's clearly because you should have done it this way. Damnit, Madi!"

"You're going to fail at every venture you try. You don't have it in you."

"You're never going to be good enough."

The words in my head usually aren't that blunt, but the feeling behind them is. I have this deep belief that the kind of success I aim for (in any area of my life) is only for perfect people. And I'm not blessed enough to ever be anything.

The other day I was in an AA meeting (I'm not an alcoholic but it's a long story) and a famous person was the night's speaker. This person looks to have a perfect life: extremely successful, liked by all, married to literally one of the most attractive people on the entire planet...

But they had SO MUCH SHIT they were working through. They dealt with some serious fucking bugs in their code, like stuff that could break whole systems. And they were so not perfect.

But they didn't expect perfection. They showed up every day and did the work regardless of being human. And they would never disrespect themself with dirty self-talk.

If someone with way more to overcome in their life can go on to accomplish incredible feats, then I'm allowed to shape my own destiny and make things that matter. I can be super flawed while doing it.

And most of all, I can be super kind to myself while doing it.

PS- Speaking of perfection, I've gone over this post like... 20 or 30 times? Making small edits? I do this to every single post on this site (is this a writer thing?). And I still think this one is kind of shit. 🤷‍♀️ I'm playing around with my voice and I haven't nailed it. I'm okay with that, though.