I wouldn't say I'm a perfectionist but I set high standards for myself. Things I don't do well rarely interest me for long, however much I might enjoy them in the beginning. I even tend to leach all the pleasure from activities I'm perfectly competent at by striving to be more than competent, insisting on constant improvement. There's nothing I can't make into a job.

Blogging is a good example. I've just rewritten the third sentence of the first paragraph about five times and it still, quite obviously, isn't right. Well, "quite obviously" isn't necessary, is it? I ought to remove that.

There's a saying I've heard too often -- "If it's worth doing it's worth doing right."

That's a bad philosophy. Some of the most fun I've had has been doing things I'm lousy at. I allowed myself to run and enter road races even though I was slow as dirt. Non-athletic, couch potato that I am, running is a job I could never do "right." However, since I expected nothing from myself, I was pleasantly surprised to simply finish.

I guess I still did my "best" awful as it was, but in some cases it's more fun not to do your best. I can draw a little but I had a blast drawing comic books populated by stick figures. If I'd tried to do my best, to do it right, I'd have maybe managed to rise to the level of mediocrity and frustrate myself in the process.

Which is all by way of saying I ought to give myself permission to blog more.