The Art of Making it Up As You Go Along
Yet another reflection on not falling into the trappings of perfectionism
When the idea of this week’s post popped into my head–in the shower, of course, where many great ideas emerge (the other good ideas emerging being those right as you’re falling asleep)–I realized how familiar the thoughts were. Had I written about this before? I thought. A quick search of the word “perfection” in my Substack content brought up not one, but two whole posts that talked about moving away from perfectionism (this one and this one). And that doesn’t even count last week’s post that is tangential to the perfectionist discussion. It seems I’ve reached the point where I’m looping back on myself.
Yet still it feels worth writing up this shower idea in newsletter form because I think this topic bears reminding ourselves–me especially–every few months. The topic being that perfectionism gets in the way of our own progress, and sometimes even enjoyment. It’s what kept me from picking up drawing as a hobby because I thought I actually needed to be exceptional at it to actually enjoy it. As I’ve written, that surely isn’t the case.
How this idea bubbled up this week as I reflected on my podcast and, to be honest, how proud I was of myself for just doing it. While I had the idea for the podcast pretty soon after I started publishing the Substack newsletter, I was resistant to get started because well, I knew nothing about producing a podcast let alone doing so with no budget. And certainly knowledge would’ve helped. But a few months later I decided on more or less a whim to see if Alanna Kieffer from Shifting Tides Northwest would be down to be my beta testing guest. I wanted to interview her for the book anyway since I had taken her clamming class, so why not give it a shot. And to my delight, she was completely down for it!
We recorded on Zoom and I edited in GarageBand (the free software that seemed the most viable for my budget of $0). The interview with Alanna was a delight, but the editing was a slog and GarageBand was driving me mad with its finickiness. Having worked through the editing frustration, I published the podcast on Substack, which engaged more listeners than I ever expected. Yet, the editing process kept me from moving forward. I recorded more interviews, but couldn’t bring myself to dive into something that I so thoroughly didn’t enjoy.
But then, my friend Ashley (who hosts the public radio, Main Street, for Prairie Public Radio) came to visit in early September and recommended I try Descript, editing software where the audio is automatically transcribed and you edit by merely deleting/hiding the text. Holy cow, y’all, it blew my mind. I was suddenly absorbed in the world of Descript, thus, allowing me to publish monthly podcasts all on my own. And only recently did I discover while being interviewed for my friend’s podcast (stay tuned for that) that there is even more power to Descript such as better recording methods (no more tinny Zoom recordings!).
My whole point with this is not to give you a lesson in podcasting (although if you do want to podcast, this post is more helpful than any other I had found because not a damn one mentioned Descript in those early Googling session), rather to demonstrate the power of making it up as you go along.
The only thing you need to fuel you is your personal interest, willing participants in your interest if need be (e.g. my wonderful podcast guests who were more than thrilled to be interviewed), humility, and a willingness and openness to learn at every opportunity.
It drives my husband crazy (because he is a perfectionist, which is something one does want from their anesthesia provider), but I am a master of making shit up as I go along…and I’m damn proud of it. While it took me many years to call myself a writer or accept the title as gardener, if I become somewhat obsessed with the idea of something that feels like lower stakes are involved, I’ll jump in before really actually looking into the whole thing. I think this really helps with just getting over that initial hurdle that keeps us back from so many things (such as getting prepared for a disaster). And this winging-it-approach has come in handy in a lot of ways. We recently decided to buy a piece of land (more on that down the line) and because of how quickly these kind of decisions need to be made, we didn’t actually know a thing about what it all meant until we got the ball rolling and now, a mere few weeks later, you can pretty much ask me anything about what is involved in a land purchase in Oregon/Washington.
If there isn’t someone’s life at stake or it’s not harmful to other people or yourself, just jumping in can be the best way to just start something. And then that leads to the next step. I discovered in a podcasting session at the recent AWP conference that’s how award-winning podcast Shelter in Place by Laura Joyce Davis got started–she was bored and needed an outlet during the pandemic, so she started recording a podcast underneath a blanket in a corner of her house. And four years later, she has won podcasting awards and is teaching students at Stanford how to podcast.
I may not win awards (or maybe I will…keeping my lessons from last week in my mind), but at least I’m having fun at it and I’m learning some fun new skills along the way.
Perhaps this post is your encouragement to just go ahead and jump into the thing that you’ve been holding off on because you don’t know enough about it. And to bring it home to this whole project, take that step to get involved in climate action in whatever way makes sense to you or start taking the steps to become more prepared. And of course, must insert a shameless plug (🙂) for the disaster preparedness guide that will launch April 5th for those who need a bit of support along that journey.
So go ahead, just do it and don’t worry about making it up as you go along because sometimes that’s the only way to do a thing.
And now onto the Shameless Plug!
As a token of my appreciation for those of you on this journey with me, I have this limited-time offer of 20% off a paid subscription for your first year.
Thanks for being on this journey with me!