Fighting the Perfect

I will never find the perfect writing practice... never missing a day, always meeting my goals, always getting exactly as far as I wanted, always hitting that flow of inspiration. There will always be times I stay too long at my email. There will always be times when I forget to eat and so need to take care of myself first. There will always be children who wake up early for a nap, or who refuse to go down. There will always be jobs to take care of, errands to run, family barbecues to interfere. There will always be cheerios to be swept and dinner to be made.

Even when these things change, even when my life circumstance morphs into something else, there will always be things to get in the way of my writing.

I am a writer, but I am not only a writer, and who I am is not separate from what I do. I am a writer and a mom and a partner. I am a painter and a cook and a dismal housekeeper. I am a daughter and a sister and a niece and a cousin. I am a friend. I am a reader. I am a pop culture junky. A poet. An eight hour a day sleeper. A singer in the rain. A lounger in the shade. A walker on these city streets. I am a New Yorker exiled for now. I am a searcher for home. I am a super list maker and a daily photographer. I am a cloud watcher and a movie watcher. A sci fi geek with literary leanings. I am a journaler and a collager. I am a teacher and always will be. I am a recovering perfectionist. I am a daughter of hippies and wear flowers behind my ears. I am on a journey to wisdom and peace and art. And I am always evolving.

I am so many things. And none of them are perfect. And they all feed directly into who I am as a writer.

The only way I can see to achieve my goals as a writer is to step fully into my life and achieve my goals as a human being.

It is a huge task... and perhaps very simple.