I’m done. With thinking, expecting, planning, projecting, outlining. To hell with it all. I’m done with the crippling disappointment that accompanies most of my projects and initiatives. Work, applications, reports, papers. Relationships. Life moments. Plans. Dreams. I have perfected the art of internally scourging myself. I have mastered the frontiers of its accompanying agony. Nothing escapes her clutches, my inner voice. It’s almost a sadistic pleasure she enjoys, in tormenting us. This? You really want to put this out? You want to apply to this? You think you can do this? You think you can explain this? Who do you think you are? Before producing anything, I would have often fought countless battles within me. Exhausted, I would then venture to convince my frenemies and haters, categories that I’ve relegated most of my world to. I jest. Not really.

I remember taking ages to upload a post, and even then, I’d be mortified at it all. Seeing grammatical errors. A poorly explained idea. Or a less erudite answer to my questions. I’d upload, and then put a password to my posts. A password that only I had. I’m intimately familiar with the perimeters of my misery – I’d be gloomy, dejected, grieve, and finally, fall into depression. It’s a sequential pattern that I can almost always pin point to the last nanosecond, when I would flip to the next. Whatever it was, it would never pass my tests, standards, ideals. Judgment and shame would be my bosom companions. Of course I’d be better, how I could I not, I thought? I have never believed in unsolvable problems. And so I pored over countless articles on the arbitrary construct of perfection in our minds, of the fulfillment in imperfection. To no avail.

It eluded me. The why of it all. And how? How does one proceed to just live it? How do I practice it? How do I forget who I am, and overhaul my entire life to take on this imperfect mantle that almost everyone seems to be comfortable wearing? How do I find contentment in it? How do I untangle a lifetime’s habit that moves not without plans and outlines? That scripts every future event to the last T, and despairs at every last disruption to those well laid plans. That balks at any spontaneous adventure sprung upon us. That morosely stares at every bearer of surprises, good and beyond good, in my life.

It’s a loop. I recognize it. One that admits that my most perfect plans can be taken over by forces that are extraordinarily more powerful than my own. That my powers falter at circumstances so unpredictable as to always command a space in my life’s equation. Tragic events, present emotions, ill health, destiny. The most perfect constant variable, I’d call it. And on the other, it admits that there must be a halt to my critique. That it’s infinitely more malignant than benevolent. My shoulders now sag at the burdens laid by that voice. That I must turn off my most favoured past-time, thinking, which comes at the cost of attempting it all. It’s never ending. And it’s not worth it anymore. No one, not even I, deserve the weight of that voice, the piercing of that gaze. The crispness of those recollections. It’s never a simple demur this, it’s almost always a flogging. I’m spent. We can’t do perfection anymore. And not because we don’t want to. You have no idea. If I could, I’d still be there. But we have no capacity for it now, you see.

This is my sole resolution for this year. No more perfect lists and plans for me. We’re making an exercise of this imperfection scheme. We will be the most imperfect writer, the most imperfect researcher. The most imperfect counsellor, the most imperfect human being that lived this year. You think you’ve seen terrible reports, posts ey? You think you’ve seen terrible papers, unstomachable work? Tighten your lenses people, pull up your visors haters, I’m taking you down a road that even I don’t lead my enemies to. Came here to learn about taming that beast? Move along honey, not today. Here, we’re sharpening our imperfection knives. We’re driving down unplanned – panic, anxiety, self-doubt and failure be damned. We’re dedicated to drawing the most imperfect demarcation lines between success and failure. Drafts? What drafts? There are no drafts this year, no do-overs. I’m taking us into portals and within channels that are hopelessly, inconceivably unswimmable. There are no awards this year, here we just flail our arms and drown.

So hello imperfection, my old friend. How do you do?