Perfectionism is not a path to happiness, but a road to chronic self-dissatisfaction.
Perfectionism is not a path to happiness, but a road to chronic self-dissatisfaction.
Posts about “perfectionism”
Selected articles, stories, and notes. Total entries: 11.
Authenticity
Katya deleted Instagram on Tuesday, at 11:47 PM. Before that, she wrote a post. Wrote it for a long time — first draft, second draft, third. She needed to find the right words. Honest, but not pathetic. Bold, but not arrogant. Vulnerable, but not weak. It came out like this: "I'm leaving. I don't know for how long — maybe forever. These past...
Rumination
Anton checked the email for the fourth time. Three paragraphs to a client. Routine approval. He read it over, changed a word, changed it back. Sent. A second later, he was checking if it went through. It did. He opened his sent folder. Read it again. Found a phrase that now seemed harsh. Or did it? He couldn't tell. He imagined the client reading...
The Editing Room
Anna kept an editing room in her head. She didn’t so much live her life as she re-cut it after the fact. Reality was nothing but raw, awkward footage that ended up in the hands of her inner director-a cynical, ruthless genius who always knew how it should have been . Here’s today’s material. A park. A rare sunny day. She’s on a bench with a book....
Requiem for the Ideal Self
Listen. You wake up and the first thought is, "Something's off." Not with the world, not with the weather-it's you. Yesterday you decided to be perfect. You looked at your coworker Petya, apostle of clean eating, and thought, "There. I should be like Petya." And today you overslept, and the grated carrot salad you swore you'd eat for breakfast...
Perfection is a synonym for the end. It is the point after which growth is no longer possible.
Perfection is a synonym for the end. It is the point after which growth is no longer possible.
The Decorator
At first, we are architects. We are born a wild, unmapped landscape. Somewhere lies a swamp of secret wants, somewhere cliffs of irrational fear, somewhere clearings of pure, causeless joy. Very early on, though, an inner perfectionist wakes up with a master plan for the build-out. He isn’t a tyrant. He’s a decorator. He undertakes the...
Every story is born from the ashes of its drafts
Clay
Old potter Kenji didn’t produce bowls — he carried on a conversation with clay. His workshop, smelling of dust and rain, was lined with shelves. They displayed not triumphs but scars: hundreds of cracked, lopsided, imperfect vessels. One day a young student, Ryo, arrived with a shining ideal in his head: a bowl thin as a petal and symmetric as the...
Rust
Arthur was not a person. He was a function housed in a flawless exoskeleton. His title — “Senior Partner” — was a cuirass. His measured, emotionless speech — a sealed visor. His daily commute from sterile suburb to glass office tower — greaves that kept him from straying. Deep inside that armor didn’t sit Arthur at all, but a small, frightened...
The Blot
Victor wasn’t living. He was sterilising reality. His apartment was an operating room, and he, its chief surgeon, carved out any tumor of chaos. His balcony, tiled in flawless white, was his personal annex of sterility on the seventh floor. Deep in the basement of his skull, in a dark, reeking corner, a howling monkey sat chained. That monkey...