Beginning is hard. I watched a handful of Bluey episodes earlier: the first eight of season three. The very first is called "Perfect". It takes place on Father's Day, and the girls are working on drawings for Bandit. Bluey herself struggles with what to draw for her dad, fixated on it being perfect. Like, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really good. Good enough to earn its place on the fridge. She spends the bulk of the episode making some great drawings of the fun times she's had with her dad, rejecting each for not being perfect enough. We learn later that her mom had displaced another drawing of Bluey's that had earned a spot on the fridge with one Bingo had done of a flower, an act capped with a proclamation of "perfect".

I always feel like I'm vying for space on the fridge door. Trying to present the perfect image for display. Like I have to be as impressive as possible to avoid being overlaid with phone bills and grocery lists. It's exhausting. And people don't seem to care very much, anyway. Well, no. It's not apathy. It's annoyance.

The worst part is that I don't care. Not really. I like being good at things. I like having skills, knowing things, and all that good stuff. There's satisfaction to be had there. But I don't feel like I'm doing it for me. Sometimes, but mostly it's about fridgeworthiness. And that spoils it. It's not that I'm averse to contributing to my community, I only want to determine how it is I contribute. And I feel like I surrendered that at some point.

Now I don't know where the bar is. Because nobody ever asked or even demanded to determine how I contribute. So, there's no reason for anybody to tell me the standard that they never wanted to have to set in the first place. Not to say some haven't taken advantage of my uncertainty... but nobody's ever set the bar. So I wear myself out flopping over an invisible high jump, and the mat on the other side is getting mighty thin, if it's still there at all.

So I stopped making the leap, for the most part. Stopped even being able to. And I never got much height in any of the attempts, to begin with. Not knowing where the bar is, I not only had to guess at height, but also direction. Sometimes I'd settle for claiming a successful try, just to avoid the shame of failure. But, my ignorance required me to exaggerate, in case the bar was pretty high. And of course that's annoying. Especially when claims outweigh trying.

This all ties in with my grappling with the larger mystery of what people want, in general, but that's a big kettle, packed with all kinds of fish. This fish is called "perfection", and I've choked on its bones so many times. I'm less obsessed with being perfect as I am with thinking that's what people want me to be. Or at least, that's a safe starting point from which to eliminate things surplus to requirements. I want the freedom to try and mess up and learn and try again, but I've always been afraid that I don't have it. Which leaves the only thing to learn from messing up being that I'm not good enough.


Today I played video games and watched TV, tended to the cats, but did little else besides. I'm grateful to have Bluey to fit my worries into an 8-minute runtime, resolving them with time to spare for theme song and credits.