Sunday 5 January 2014

"Good enough" is good enough for me.

When I say "that's good enough", it implies I have reached one of two stages.

The first is the point of frustration. When I have been toiling away at something for hours, or sometimes just minutes. This is often something I don't care about as much as I ought to, be it a blogpost or an essay or icing a cake. This is the version where I throw in the towel and accept that I cannot be bothered to work any more: it is the "fuck it, that's good enough" mentality.

The other arises more rarely. It applies to the things I really care about, more often the things I write out of an obligation to my own sense of artistry than the things I write out of academic necessity. It's an acceptance that I will never be as good as I want to be, unless I work hard. And that's okay: I can't just jump into being perfect. I have to work. For now, this is good enough.

Good enough.

Sometimes it's hard to remember that we are our own person, isn't it? It seems like we're surrounded by people telling us we are not pretty enough, our skin not smooth enough, our conversation not sparkling enough, our rooms not tidy enough. Admittedly yes, my room isn't tidy, but it's tidy enough for me! I can find anything I want on this desk, if I spend some time wading through the salmagundi of papers on it and remember to move my biscuit tins.

"Fuck it, that's good enough" is what I say after ten minutes of half-hearted tidying up, or two days of staring blankly at the third chapter of Plato's Republic. It's also what I'll say about the prologues I draft and re-draft. And it's the fear of it - of not being good enough - which means those prologues are left as forewords to stories that never get written. 

I am tired of not thinking myself good enough, and I am tired of my own lazy standards.

So that is my new year's resolution, in the broadest possible sense: to never settle for being less than enough. And to remind myself that things do not need to be perfect. Strive for better, but recognise when "good" means "good enough".

This blog post isn't great, but it's something - and something that has provided a temporary portal away from the stress of my exam revision. It'll do. Fuck it. For now, it's good enough.

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