This morning I checked up on an insta page belonging to a Swedish woman. She’s one of my favorite people to check on, because she recently moved her whole family back to Sweden and I enjoy moving updates as much as the next person. Also Sweden is fully within the depths of Winter and I love seeing dramatic high saturation sunrises over the massive frozen lake next to the new home.
I could go on and on about what I find both fascinating and relatable about her account, but I won’t. Mostly because as I scrolled through the grid of snowscapes and smiling faces, I landed on a lesser algorithmically friendly photo: a close up of her left hand resting on heart, right hand holding a smoking stick of what looks like Palo Santo.
It was her last post of 2021, with the caption reading something along the lines of: do you have your intentions, your affirmation, your word for the new year?
It was the last bit that struck me. A single word for the year.
Immediately something so big yet so small caused me to suck in my breath. It reminded me of these recurring dreams I had when I was very small. Dreams that felt so real I thought I was in a waking state: grayscale tableaus of feathers that weighed as much as elephants. Or giant creatures, now shrunk to the size of a coin, but still so incredibly dense and heavy. I’d feel so stressed in these dreams, watching these shapes that existed outside the bounds of physics.
As I pondered this word-of-the-year exercise, it felt all too complicated. What is the point of choosing one single word for a whole year full of mystery? Is this word supposed to convey what I want from the 12 months? Or act as a predictor? Could I distill all my intentions down to one single word? At this point my head was swimming with blankness, trying to conjure what in the world I could employ for the year ahead.
Okay, maybe I shouldn’t be on the phone before having my morning matcha or half-caff latte. But today it was too late, there was no going back.
I looked to the comments—cheating perhaps—but wanting to get a few clues. As soon as I did, I began to feel foolish. Everyone’s answers were shockingly appropriate. If I had the time, I’d make a chart of marking the responses—there were a lot of repeats.
Words like: flourish, surrender, passion, space.
All of the sudden this exercise felt very normal, obvious even.
Everyone’s word was valid and loyal to their personal intuitive interpretation.
Some chose to call forward their hopes:
thrive, growth, abundance, nourished
Others had reminders to self:
me, listen, boundaries, feel, balance
Or there were shapes of year’s trajectory:
purpose, action, prosperity, heal
Their broad words left room for so much more. There never was a right answer, although my perfectionist streak had convinced me otherwise.
The heavy feather vanished, the tiny giant slipped back into oblivion.
Too often, my boyfriend reminds me that perfect is an enemy of the good.
Without consciously doing so, I will put things off or scrap them all together because I can’t find the bandwidth to make it “Perfect.” I’m at the point in my perfectionism where I don’t even think in terms of perfection, but I often strive for it, rowing and rowing towards the ever elusive horizon.
I’ve become a lot more diligent at recognizing the ways I engage in this fruitless pursuit. My awareness around it is only because I fed Perfect many years of my life, hoping it would finally be satisfied. There’s a comfort in holding onto specifics. Little did I know my high expectations had grown so rigid, they blocked circulation.
Loosening my outlook and freeing up some space, suddenly allowed for a rush of blood to all the limbs of my life.
Much of that happened when I admitted what I didn’t know. I confessed to myself that I was not full of direction. I confessed to myself that I could fail. I confessed to myself that I WOULD be okay if I started again, even if it meant a long path of I-don’t-knows.
The majority of my formative years was spent in front of a TV. I’d come home from school, watch a few hours of sitcoms alone in the living room while doing my homework. Then I’d eat dinner in my mom’s bed—the bedroom often pitch black except for the blue light of the tv—while scrolling through the movies offered on time warner cable.
These darkened bedroom nights always seemed to last forever. I’d thumb the soft rubber buttons on the remote, starting yet another movie as I monitored my mom, got her various pills and pillows and pieces of pecan pie. Every night I would hope to lose myself in mundane acting, cheesy plot lines and the occasional heist movie.
In many ways, the Perfect I strive for comes from that place. From a limited life. Perfect means well—it is fiercely propelling me away from a small existence, something that I learned to be okay with for so long.
There’s nothing like a push off to get you started on your laps. Maybe that burst comes from knowing what you don’t want. But soon, you’re out in the water. You meet mistakes, have to find your stamina. To keep going forward, you need motion, even if you can’t know exactly what you do want.
I suppose a word can act like a beacon. Something to follow when there isn’t an absolute obvious path.
Okay okay, so here’s my word:
Expansion.
That’s all for today. See you next time.
xx
James
p.s. the perfectly imperfect guide sale is still on!
(today’s newsletter topic was not planned in a crazy imperfect theme)
but ! slight production errors means the guides are $8!
if you’d like to grab a copy, click here
if perfect looks like a person running on the treadmill to reach the donut (limited), expansion is running across a desert for the sake of making the distance
Love that line, "perfect is an enemy of the good" makes my head turn. The season of expanding is finally here, hope it finds you well :)