Are Online Challenges Good for Perfectionists?
Two years ago, I did the #100DayProject. Participants decide to do something creative every day for 100 days. It starts April 1, but you can start it any time you want to. Some people create a drawing a day, practice their guitar daily, knit on a big project every day, etc. I decided to make collages, which as we all know is my favorite way to practice being considerably less than perfect at something.
I followed the official advice, which is to pick a theme or source of inspiration that can help you think up what to create each day. I wrote out a bunch of random song lyrics that I just like and made collages inspired by whichever lyric grabbed me that day. They were all pretty small, since I made them in a notebook.
(Pro tip - If you’re going to make an art journal from an existing book, you need to remove quite a few pages so that the book will still close properly despite all the extra layers you’ll be adding. I didn’t do that, and some day that notebook will be so full that it will form a complete circle.)
So does this mean I made 100 collages? Reader, I did not. Thanks to migraines, etc. I was only able to make a collage on half the days. In theory, I could’ve decided that my 100 days didn’t have to be all in a row, but I was worn out so I stuck with 100 calendar days so I could be done.
Of course, I saw this as a failure. I set out to make 100 collages in 100 days, and instead I made only 50 collages.
Only 50.
Sometimes even I can’t believe myself. Only a perfectionist would see this as a failure. And I, dear friends, am just that perfectionist.
Last year I didn’t do the #100DayProject because it was just too much. Instead, I did #lettermo, in which one connects with pen pals and puts a letter or card in the mail every day in February. It’s a short month, so that should’ve been easy.
It was not.
I connected with some great people and I’ve continued corresponding with several of them. Though between the burnout and ALL THIS, it takes me a few months to reply to someone. But I still have several pen pals and I regularly receive something happy in the mail.
Does this sound like a failure? It did to me. Because of perfectionism.
Perfectionism is a real jerk.
So are these sorts of challenges good for perfectionists or bad?
Obviously, they’re almost guaranteed to hit you right in the perfectionism. But they’re also an opportunity to see how ridiculous perfectionism is.
I’ve sworn off challenges like these for the time being because I don’t think I’m capable of beginning something like this without expecting that I actually will do the thing every day.
Until just this second, I thought that was the mentally healthy choice. And then I realized that I’ve decided not to embark on any more of these challenges until I can go into it with the right mindset (aka the perfect mindset).
Pardon me while I go curse up a storm for a few minutes.
OK, I’m back. I just…sigh. Maybe this is proof that I really need to dive into another one of these challenges, just so that I can learn once again how ridiculous perfectionism can be.