Making misteaks

Over the weekend I started reading a book called "Present Perfect" about perfectionism. Not because I'm a perfectionist. Because I'm not. Don't believe me? Go back and read some of my earlier posts and you'll see. A perfectionist wouldn't post anything unless it was perfect, right?

(Or is it "unless it were perfect?" See, I'm not going to even go and look that one up. That's how much of a non-perfectionist I am.)

Anyway, I've gone back and read some of the stuff that I've written, and every time I do, I find that they are full of misteaks. Which I don't always correct. Well, actually I do correct them, but the point is: misteaks. So I'm definitely not a perfectionist. And the book does not apply to me.

Really.

If a perfectionist found a misteak in one of his posts wouldn't he assume that there might be other misteaks and then go back and read each post until he was satisfired that he'd fixed every misteak? I would if I were a perfectionist. But I'm not. The very fact that I don't go back and read every post after discovering several with errors proves that I am not a perfectionist.

I've gone back and read stuff that I wrote, and it is always painful. I don't mean to say that I don't think I'm a good writer. When I reread things that I've written, I'm generally pleazed despite floors. I know that that I'll find misteaks, because I'm not a perfectionist. And I know it's better to have written something, despite possible misteaks than to have written nothing at all.

But still, it's horrible going back and seeing all the misteaks that I've made. Who wants to have their face rubbed into clear evidence of their sloppy work, their inattention to detail and...wait? Does that sound a little like the voice of a perfectionist to you? It sounds that way to me, too. But that's got to be a misteak because I am definitely not a perfectionist.

Want more proof? Take email. When I write an email, I don't try to write something perfect. I mean it's just fucking email, so I write it and I send it. Of course, I spell check it. But that's it. I spell check it. And then read it over to make sure it's clear. That's not being a perfectionist, is it?

And if I find that I need to fix a few words that doesn't make me a perfectionist,does it?. You can always make something clearer if you choose a better word. And there's often a better word. But spending time looking for better words doesn't make me a perfectionist.

I almost always find that I can make my email clearer if I rearrange a few sentences. That's true for even an email that's three sentences long. Order often makes a difference. So I often reorder sentences. Does that make me a perfectionist? Of course not.

Yes, so I read and reward and rearrange just about every email that I write. And while I'm doing the rearranging I'll often find ways to make the email better by adding more detail and tightening up what I've already written. Is that perfectionism? No. It's just good manners. It's consideration for whoever is going to read it. By putting in a little extra time on the writing end, I can save them some time on the reading end.

And if I've cited a fact--and many emails have facts in them--I try to do the responsible thing. Say if the email that I'm writing refers to an earlier, different email conversation. Then, of course, I'll search my archives to make sure that I didn't misrepresent that conversation. Is that perfectionism? No, it's just diligence. Or responsibility.

And if I can verify a fact on the web then I'll check Wikipedia or some other reliable source to make sure that I haven't said something that's wrong. I think that the amount of ignorance and misinformation that's circulating is a growing social problem and I don't want to compound that problem by adding my own ignorance and misunderstanding to what's already there. So I always look things up, sometimes checking multiple sources. And I always include a link so that if whoever reads my email is similarly motivated they can just click the link. And then I'm done.

Unless the information is complex and merely scanning a reference seems irresponsible. In that case, I'll carefully read each reference to make sure that I understand and I believe their main argument. And--of course--if there are competing points of view that might be credible--or that my reader might consider credible--then I _must_ do at least a _little_ research to make sure that I am not being unreasonably one-sided. That's not perfectionism. it's fairness.

Of course, since everything in the universe is connected to everything else, researching any single fact leads, logically, to investigating the entire universe.  That's not practical, of course. A perfectionist might not see that, but I do. So I set limits. I realize that any limits that I set must be arbitrary. And I don't want to be considered an arbitrary person. But I also don't want to spend the rest of my life replying to a single email, so I've got to make an arbitrary decision to cut off research at a certain point. If I were a perfectionist (which I am not) I couldn't make that decision, and I'd keep researching forever. The fact that I can stop researching some unimportant bit of information, incidental to the email that I'm writing, in as little as ten or twenty minutes is clear evidence that I'm not a perfectionist.

To further prove that I'm not a perfectionist I just checked the list of blog posts that Blogger keeps. I've written a couple of hundred posts since I started writing. If I was or were really a perfectionist, I would still be working on the first post because I'm sure it's not perfect.I've posted a couple of hundred posts (actually, 232--I checked because it's important to be accurate) so I'm well past the first.

I do have about hundred posts that I started and never finished. So some might argue that my perfectionism (which does not exist) got in the way of finishing them. They were good but they weren't good enough. (Actually, it's 111 posts. Including this one.)

Hmmm.

(The not-good-enough is the enemy of the good? That's not right. Let me take a minute and look it up. Right. It's "The perfect is the enemy of the good." Now who said that? Oh, yes, Voltaire. Well, Voltaire wouldn't have said that. He would have said something in French. Ahh, here it is: "Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien,." Wait a minute. I know a _little_ French. And "perfect" would be "parfait." "Le mieux" would be something like "The better." That's right, isn't it? I better check Google Translate because, you know, I don't want to make a misteak here. Yep. That's it.)

So clearly, I'm not a perfectionist. If I were, I'd be reading the complete works of Voltaire, right now, in the original French to be sure that I wasn't misrepresenting Voltaire. But I'm not. I'm not a perfectionist. I'm just a guy who spends a lot of time trying to avoid misteaks.

Anyway, it's so far been an interesting book. It seems that it could help a person who is a perfectionist. Even someone like me, who is not a perfectionist, might get something out of it.

Now, excuse me, but I've got a three line email that I've been working on for a couple of hours, and I really want to get it out.