Present > Perfect

Because life is one big messy first draft

For years, I told myself I’d get back to writing when life settled down. When my kids were older. When work wasn’t so demanding. When I finally “felt ready.”
But truth I finally came to terms with is there’s never going to be a perfect time.

In her book Feel the Fear…and Do it Anyway Susan Jeffers explains the root of this “right time” myth: Hint? It’s a four letter F word…

When we feel fear, we’ll find a million excuses to stop us from even starting. We’ll subconsciously convince ourselves that one day we won’t be afraid, and that’s the day we’ll start. The kicker? The only way to overcome the fear is to do the thing we’re afraid of.

I think the fear for me, and for a lot of us, is of our own imperfection. If you’ve ever tried to write a novel (or even a journal entry), you know the first draft is always far from perfect. It’s full of typos, tangents, and plots that fall flat. The same goes for our lives. We will never feel “finished”. There’s always an edit or a plot twist waiting for us.

We spend so much of our lives wishing we could either revise the past or fast-forward to an ideal version of ourselves in the future. I know I have. It’s one of the major themes in my novel, Annie in Retrospect—a story about a woman who literally gets the chance to swap places with her 25-year-old self. At 40, she longs for the past. At 25, she’s in a hurry for the future. Neither version of her is satisfied with the messy, imperfect present.

But the truth is, life is one big, messy first draft.

The work isn’t about making it perfect—it’s about showing up, being present, and staying open to what the moment you’re in has to offer you. 

Instead of resisting that truth, what if we embraced it? What if happiness isn’t about arriving at the final, polished version, but about loving the messy draft we’re in right now?

Here’s to seeing the beauty in being a work-in-progress, 

-K