On Waiting for Perfection

I have been called a lot of different things in my life.

When I was young, for instance, a friend from school refused to play boardgames at a boardgame party another friend was hosting. After the party, when I asked my girlfriend (at the time) why E wasn’t playing, M said she didn’t want to play with people who were “so competitive.”

“Who’s competitive?” I asked, and M just looked at me like I was a big dummy.

I knew I was competitive. At the time, I kind of hated it about myself, especially when playing organized sports, or even un-organized sports. I had been benched by my coach, or ejected by referees more than once. My friends all knew I was a bit of a loose cannon, AND it’s true I don’t like losing (don’t like here meaning: hate; I hate it so, so much). Which is to say: Yes, I like to win boardgames, but I was aware enough to understand caring about boardgames doesn’t go over well. I actually believed I was good at hiding that I cared. I tried very hard to be the happy-go-lucky version of myself I wished I could be. But it seemed, in spite of this, everyone figured I was legitimately upset when loosing, enough so that at least one of ‘em chose not to play boardgames at a boardgames night.

I’ve spent a lifetime trying to keep that side of myself in check.

Once, a youth pastor from a visiting church took me aside to tell me I “was an encouragement to him.” He said he doesn’t think he’s ever met someone as “passionate about life” as I was. This was strange to me, because as a fifteen-year-old, I had spent the last every year of school listening to my teachers telling my parents I was unmotivated and lazy. I’ve had people tell me I’m the kindest person they know, while (many) others say I am intimidating, at least at first. People say I look like a pothead, or a jock, or a huge nerd, or—sometimes—so cool. I’ve never really been able to figure out what other people think about me. People often say they’re “surprised to find out I’m smart,” after a bit of a chat, and others say ( a little bit less often) that they “never knew I was so dumb,” after another, more different chat. A friend once asked me: “Why are so boring?” while a near stranger just recently told me: “In the twenty years I’ve been in this position, I think you might be the most interesting person I’ve met.”

I’ve never really been able to figure out what people think about me. I seem to be something of mystery (to other people; we don’t need to investigate what I think about myself right now). The weird thing is, though, I think I agree with all of them. Given the context of their respective relationships to me, I think everybody is at least partly right. I do feel passionate about things, but I very often feel unmotivated re: many other things (tho I’ve never felt like I could really call myself lazy). I try hard to be kind, but I know a 230lb lug of a man with arms full of tattoos could be intimidating. I’m not—nor have ever been—a pothead, but my eyes are very squinty, I’m a forgetful sunnuva biatch, and I’ve had a perpetual case of the munchies since 1999. I used to think of myself as a jock, I’ve always secretly known I was a nerd, and of course: I am cool. I more often feel dumb than smart—I’ve never really believed I was smart, tho I have read a lotta books, so . . . I could see it. I don’t know about being boring, but neither do I know about being the most interesting person one has met.

I like to say that I don’t really care what people think about me, and I try really hard to be myself (whatever that means) in every sitiation, whether it’s work or home or at karaoke, or online. Which to say: for the most part, what you see is what you get with me (tho I do know there are several sitations in which I can feel myself masking to “fit the vibe”). I say I don’t care, and it feels true when I say/think it, but I also really hate the feeling when someone doesn’t like me.

What does this have to do with anything? Good question. Lemme tell you.

I have been called one thing though my entire life, and until very recently I had no idea how people could have possibly believed it about me: the dread “perfectionist.”

It has always been very confusing for me, especially coming from the same teachers who told me I was unmotivated, or was “not living up to my potential.” In fact, I tried really hard to present as someone who did not care at all, about almost anything. Even my competitiveness: in trying to mask that, I had started trying to tell myself I didn’t care (tho this was all but impossible re: sports). I didn’t study for exams, cause, well, I was getting mid eighties anyway, and what if I started studying and my marks didn’t get any higher? Or they got worse? Even in Uni, I tried handing some assignments in early (instead of waiting until 3 hours before they were due to get started), and I got lower grades on those than anything I did under the weight of a looming deadline. In final exams, I would cruise through the test, and anything I didn’t know immediately on the first go through the exam, I’d just skip. When I finished the thing, I’d flip back to those questions, and if the answer wasn’t there in my lil noggin, I’d just hand it in. I was nearly always the first person done exams in every class I ever took through my two degrees. I had friends (and family) who studied until they were crying onto their textbooks, or who literally crammed the entire night before an exam—”I’ll sleep after finals”—but I could not be bothered.

I’ve always taken pride in my work (especially my art & writing), it’s true, and I’ve always liked to do things properly the first time through (eg. I like to read instructions before building things), but I have never one time in my little life, thought to myself: This Must Be Perfect.

At least: that’s always the first thing I think whenever anyone has accused me of being a perfectionist. I don’t care (I try to tell myself) about nearly anything, and I’d never even assume I could make it—anything—perfect. Even if my inner self is proud of his artwork (or whatever it is), I would never want to seem as if I were proud of it. I like to put things out into the world (again, this is what I tell myself), and if people think, “That’s kinda cool,”—or—”Weird”—or even—”Meh”—I couldn’t care less (Right, Tim?).

In starting The Black Bird Commons, though, I’m starting to realize: People may have had a point.

*           *           *

You may have noticed my delay in releasing any sort of updates, my delay in sending out Tim’s Top One-Hundy (a mid Kickstarter campaign promise), my digital rewards (to those backers who chose them), my lack of posts on socials (Post-campaign), updates re: lease and opening, etc, etc, etc. It honestly feels like I am not doing So Many things, even if it also seems like I am doing So Many things. However, it does seem as tho my little noggin has a crippling inability to send anything out unless . . . I think it’s perfect.

I have been working on the Top One-Hundy list for MONTHS. I have been trying to figure out on which platorm I should create the digital playlist(s). I have designed and redesigned covers for the hand-bound books I need to build a hundred times over. I have researched which paper to use for my hand-made journals to the point that I am overwhelmed with options. I have been waiting for all the details and updates I feel we need before posting about what’s going on with the shop. And it turns out: nobody cares about deadlines, even when they’re written down on signed contracts, so waiting for updates has been—well, frustrating (to say the least).

All of this has made it so I have basically gone into hiding. Since hundreds of strangers were gracious enough to offer their money and support for the shop, I have (at least publicly) all but disappeared.

I don’t know if I need to apologize for this, but I feel like I need to apologize for this.

So: I apologize.

*           *           *

I think I’ve mentioned that we’ve secured a building. We’ve sent a deposit, and we’ve got a place, but it is taking forever for everything to be finalized, and at every step, at every delay or postponed deadline, the important people keep telling us: “Please do not announce it publicly until everything is finalized.”

This has meant that we’ve been stuck waiting. After the Kickstarter hit its goal, it felt like we were rarin’ to go. We had the backing to secure a lease, and we did that within weeks of the campaign closing, but it’s felt like we pulled outta of the drive to zoom off, and the damn hatchback has been stuck in first gear. Our initial possession date was April 15 (yesterday), so I quit my job at the library to get going, but then everything was pushed back, so that now the new possession date sits at May 01. This meant we’ve had to cancel a “Pre-opening event” that was planned for the 25th, we’ve had to treat our living room as a storage locker as we collect various shelves and other furniture for the shop, and we may have to push our grand-opening back as well.

And while not having to work at the library seems like it should have opened up mountains of time for me to work on all of the other little things (and it technically has), I, again, seem to be feeling stuck in place, as if I'm trudgin’ through butta. Do I work on the books and journals I need to make? But the living room is a cluttered mess. Do I just do general housework? I’ve tried to make a dent in all of that. Where can I put all of these boxes of books? Should I order more books to stock the shelves when our possession date keeps moving farther and farther back? Should I fiddle with the website some more? But I’ve fiddled to kingdom come already. Will we be able to open first weekend of June as we’ve planned? Should I make vids explaining the sitiation? I don’t even fully know the sitiation. I know, I’ll do the Top One-Hundy thing. But building a document that is meant to be a “perfect” example of what one might expect from the shop’s shelves has been a terrifying project.

And therein lies the perfectionism.

This idea that maybe I am something of a perfectionist has hit me like a weird twist in the story of my life. I’ve had the PDF finished (sorta; you’ll see what I mean), for weeks, but it’s just been sitting on my desktop screaming at me. Things like, “You need to start over!”—or—”What ever made you think you could this?”—or something like—”You cannot, under any circumstances, show this steaming pile of hot garbage to anyone.” I keep tweaking the website until it’s nothing close to what I started with, moving one thing here on the desktop, which messes up the mobile version, then switching it on mobile, which makes the desktop site weird, etc, etc. It’s kind of exhausting.

On top of everything, it looks like we’ll need to apply for additional permits and zoning changes, as—in spite of multiple sources saying it should be fine for us to sell a limited selection of press-n-pour coffees—it looks like we do need a further E label on top of our A2 label which is the basic retail zoning label (this is all jargon I’ve only just learned, by the way).

All of this has put me in something of a feeling of stasis. I chatted with a guy at the city, and he tried to explain things, but he also seemed very afraid of just telling me what I need to do. He seemed to think he was only supposed to tell me some options, and let me decide what I want to do, but in my mind . . . I really wished he’d just give me a step-by-step manual. As pumped as I am for all of this, I am desperately afraid that people will eventually find out that I don’t really know what I’m doing. I think, maybe, this is where my version of perfectionism manifests. That is: I very often feel like I have to have everything perfect before presenting it to the world, even if it takes days—or weeks!—longer than it ought to, just so maybe people won’t figure me out.

Of course, there’s part of my lil noggin that can shake those thoughts off, but—evidently—there’s another, more different part of the same noggin that has been unable to get past them.

*           *           *

I am beyond excited for this adventure. I feel like I’m on the precipice of a new, life-long endeavour that could very well change who I am, who my family is, what my city could be, the reading and writing community, the arts and cultural identity of Regina. This feels silly to type here (who do I think I am, even?"), but I really do feel like we’re doing something big.

Other times, though, I feel like we’re making a big mistake, like maybe I’m not the person for this job. And of course one could say it’s just a shop. A shop isn’t that important. And that’s more than fair; I know that. But our dream is for The Commons to be so much more than a shop, and in that dream the shop is very important. But when I compare that dream to the reality of what it looks like right now, we are—for now—falling quite a bit short (in my mind, at least).

I’m having a hard time saying what I’m feeling without all of the clarifying phrases.

I guess what I’m saying is this: I would like The Black Bird Commons to be a perfect rendition of the dream I have in my head, and right now, it feels like a number of things have made me feel like The Black Bird Commons might not be that perfect rendition of the dream in my head. And as shitty as it is to say, instead of making me work harder and to find solutions or new strategies to push this dream ahead, I feel like I’ve curled into myself a little bit. I’m really coming to understand this idea of perfectionism as something inside of me that says, “If this can’t be perfect, what’s the point of doing it?”

It’s no good, being in that place.

This is not to say I’m questioning the dream. There’s no doubt we’re moving forward, the shop will be up and running shortly, and we will start working toward that perfect dream. I’m just learning that it’s okay to grow into it, rather than having it appear in full fruition right out the gate. I guess I’m learning that I have to be okay with that, that I have to be okay with the whole thing starting as a version of the final product I know it will be. It’ll just take some work. Real, physical work, obvs, but also a whole lotta mental work, which—for me—is the hardest part.

*           *           *

If you’ve read this whole thing: Thank you.

Here are some actual Updates:

1) In the spirit of getting something done even if it’s not perfect, I’m sending off Tim’s Top One-Hundy today. I’m very sure no one will actually care about it as anything close to the behemoth document of import I’ve made it in my mind (I’m trying to tell myself). But it’s mostly done, and I’m tired of the space it’s taking up in my mind, so Here it is.

2) As of right now, May 1st is our possession date. We will need to do some cosmetic renovations before opening, as well as filling the place with shelves and furniture. May is going to be a hectic month.

3) I’ve decided to postpone our Bookclub meetings. If you are a member, you may have seen the title options for May. They’re on the public page of our website, but if you’d like to vote, memberships are $5/month. Always free to attend, but for voting rights and bonus materials, we’ve set these memberships up. Email if you have any questions.

4) We’re going to try everything to have coffee/tea available upon opening, but it may be that we need to save a few loonies to get it all sorted. I’ll update as often as possible.

5) If you’re wondering about Kickstarter rewards, rest assured: We are working on them. It’s been a lot more confusing and complicated than I had expected just sorting out what we actually have to make. The Kickstarter fulfilment section is far more complicated than it needs to be (in my mind), but Chantelle has managed to put everything into an easy-to-read spreadsheet. Thank God for Chantelle.

6) We will be at the Cathedral Arts Festival on May 23rd, so come say hello if you plan to attend, and we’ll also be at a Darke Hall on May 02. We have been invited to set up a table before the Amici Singers Choir performances (2:30PM & 7PM). Not sure what this will look like, but we’ll be at both events lettin’ people know we’re coming.

7) I’m getting very grey.

Thanks for reading,

Tim