Perfectionism & Capitalism

Been thinking a lot about what made it so hard to come back from the pause I took on this podcast... amidst many physical & mental health reasons, I also battled my perfectionism.

This deep fear that nothing that wasn't perfect, scrubbed clean of all my flaws, could ever be presented to the world.

In an age where everything is monetized - even, maybe especially, our communities and our connections - it feels increasingly difficult to do something messily. To do something before I'm good at it - in order to get better at it.

To be public with my imperfections.
To create something not to be sold, not to cultivate an impressive following.
To follow the desire to express myself without knowing where it will lead me.

This feels like the opposite of capitalism, which in our American culture has turned every instinct, every hobby, every human need - even creativity and connection - into something whose sole purpose is to make money.

And I end up grappling with the "purpose" of creating if I can't show on a Profit & Loss statement its value. 

Worth has become defined by productivity, and by monetary compensation.

How do we reclaim the human imperative to tell our stories? To dance, to sing, to write and perform, to paint and cross-stitch, to build and to garden?


Now you can also watch the episode on YouTube !

Come check out the Hot Mess series on TikTok, and watch as I lose my mind - and find it again - writing, producing, and acting in a show!

#CreatingIsHealing🦋

Transcript

Hi friends. 

Ohh this is hard to come back to you, which is perfect for tonight's topic I have been thinking so much about. Why was hard to come back to this podcast that I love so much? And one of the reasons we talked about last week is I've been really sick and that really triggered. Kind of intense depression, which made it hard to do anything other than function in life and I'm really, really grateful for the help that I got with that and the antidepressants. That I am on, and I am willing to be the poster child for Wellbutrin for anyone who needs antidepressants or any kind of help from medicine and hasn't been sure if it's worth trying. I don't know that it will help, but I just think it's. Been a game changer for me and. So I keep telling everyone, you know, if it's something that you need, I want everyone to have the ability to try it or have access to it because you don't know if that's something that might be a really key part to your healing. And it's been one for me. So normally in that conversation has been really important to me. That's last week's episode. Um. But the other thing that I've been really struggling with is perfectionism is sort of in the time that I've been away. When I first started the podcast a year and a half ago, I think it was I had this very clear idea that I wanted it to be messy. I was really practicing giving myself permission to. Be imperfect to not have a perfect format, not know exactly how it was going to go. I knew there would be tangents. I knew it would end up saying, because that's how I talk in life, saying random things. I wasn't going to have a perfect script, and I didn't even know. I kind of thought it'd be between 15 and 30 minutes, but I didn't know how long. I didn't know how bad it would be. I don't know if it'd be good. And that was sort of. The goal, weirdly, 

was to kind of just practice showing up without. Needing perfectionism so much. Not that I want it to be bad or ever hope for that. There's definitely an outline and a topic and a thought behind it, but just. Um, one of my battles in life has been perfectionism. Has been this idea that you can't do anything until it's perfect. But the truth is, we learn to do things by ******* up, doing them imperfectly, and then we get better at them. So you have to start where you are, which I never want to do, because I want to know ahead of time how to do something I've never done before. Hopefully you know what that feels like. If not, God bless. Um, so I've talked about that section of perfectionism before and. And what I've been thinking about as has been hard to come back. Um, because. Ah. It just kind of thinking about a different way about it is this idea of. Capitalism thinking in my brain this idea that if I'm doing this podcast and I'm not selling anything, I'm not launching a program, I'm not trying to be your life coach. I'm not selling you weekend retreat somewhere. I'm not trying to get 1000 or 100,000 followers if I don't have some kind of tangible, audacious money making goal. What the Hell's the point? Of doing anything. And I got nothing wrong with capitalism. Let me start with that. I don't think capitalism is itself inherently bad. I am a Canadian, so I do believe in socialism and a social safety net to some degree, but we know socialism doesn't fully work. We know that Communism definitely doesn't work and capitalism is in and of itself can be really energizing in a way that people have always sort of bartered and has done business together. But the way that capitalism expresses itself in the states I find. Pretty savage. It's not 

the way Europeans sort of practice capitalism that has nice. Social safety net and vacation and long dinners and just a real sense of rest and downtime. And I think one of the things that the US has done is really turned everything into. Into purposeful work. And maybe that's our um. Protestant heritage. I'm definitely a wasp of that and of that nature, but this sense of, you know. Idle hands are the devil's work that they're that idleness is not useful, that doing something for fun, that doing something for pleasure, that doing something because you're curious about it or you want to learn how to do it. Doesn't inherently have purpose. And I've been thinking a lot about that this idea that. I really enjoy doing this for the 12 people who listen to me. Shout out to you guys. I don't even know who you are, but love you. And I'm not trying to grow something so much as grow myself. I'm really curious about what why this is hard and what there is to learn about it and how to show up in perfectly and have things to say and and be on camera and all these things and. And yet, in the back of my mind, for several months I was really just hesitant to what the hell is the point of a podcast if I'm not selling something? And and I've I've been thinking a lot about that because it's happened in other places. Like I started playing the ukulele and singing during the pandemic. And it started out really fun, and then it became something I wanted to do and share with people. And then it became something I had to be really good at before I could share it. And then it stopped being fun because I wasn't good enough yet and I was behind on learning. And it's like that snowball of if it's not, if it's not going to make you money, if it can't prove its value to you through a dollar amount 

that you can earn with it, then it's purposeless. Which I don't think is true. But I think it's sort of what's gotten into maybe not everyone's head, but certainly floats in the ethos and the zeitgeist of the US you know, I think about that with Instagram. I love Instagram. And yet. I love it as a community. I follow some incredible activists, I follow incredible thinkers who don't have my background, and I get to learn so much from them. I follow a lot of healers. I just. I find it very uplifting. It's a very curated feed, and even then I end up. Sort of always feeling like something is being sold to me because that's what it is. You know it. It lives on marketing and. 

We've really taken all sense of creativity and connection and community and monetized it. And that's also just our social media and our digital age. But it's something that I think a lot about with creativity because. I have the same through line of how can I be an actor or comments like an actor if I'm not being paid full time to act? How can I be a writer if I'm not being paid to publish writing articles or or write a novel? You know, how can I call myself a musician if I just played an open mic or for myself? 

And. 

There's such incredible loss to that binary because I really deeply believe that. Humans are inherently creative. We need to express ourselves. We do it in different ways. My aunt does this incredible thing where she'll take ink blots from stamps and and draw with them. You know, people carve wood or paint or cross stitch, crochet. There's so many different ways to be creative. Some people are architects, they build things, but every one of us is inherently in need of. Expressing themselves creatively. And I think. 

I think creativity, connection, and community are incredibly human needs that have all been lost in this monetizing thing. And what's problematic about that then, is this perfectionism, this idea that, well, if I'm not doing it for money, if I'm not doing it perfectly, if I'm not doing it with this purpose of proving myself through the value add, quote, UN of of its money that I can generate with it. Really shuts down the ability to show up creatively and I've been traveling. This past month and in uh in the South, getting away from New York City, which is I've travelled before, but sort of living, not just traveling as a tourist, but sort of living somewhere else has been really interesting and seeing people engage. And creativity on a much smaller scale, in a much more communal way, you know, local regional theatre that's doing an incredible production that you wouldn't hear about in New York. And again, this sounds like such an ******* thing to say that, you know, New York when you live there, it feels like the center of everything, but it does. It has a certain hustle. And this certain, certainly for me, this idea that I have to prove myself to the people who are running the industry, the, you know, in New York City and to leave New York City and step back and realize there's so much music. Happening around me, there's so much. 

Yeah. I'm in Asheville, NC, which is known for its mountain music, and there's. Fiddle jams in pretty much every single. It's sort of like when you go to Nashville, you know there's music and all down the street there's certain places where music congregates, and this just happens to be a bluegrass and mountain music hub. And so there's this incredible amount of music. And some of them are professional musicians and they do tour, and some of them maybe play more for their friends and family and are still incredible performers. And but what it feels is this sense of community. When you go and listen to music, it's. The local harvest festival, and it's a local weekend here and you're just surrounded by music and you're surrounded by crafts and artistry. And again, if you don't live in a major market like New York City, this might be a very like due statement. But I've just been there for so long and thought so much about myself and my creativity as being something that requires proof through its monetary value that it's been really energizing to leave that. And see how much people live their lives being creative. Sometimes getting paid, but necessarily making their entire living doing that and it still is so fulfilling. And what I see more and more is just that it's a communal need. It's a communal desire to perform for each other, to create songs, to create stories, to put on plays, to make crafts. To share all of that. And So what I was thinking in the back of my mind was, you know, what the Hell's the point of a podcast if I'm not selling something? And what I came to is? These three ideas that I think creativity is inherent and I have a need and a desire to express myself and create this thing, and I really seek community and connection and those are really important to me and I think what I'm in part, trying to reclaim. And my own thought processes and sort of putting it out there is what is it to? Take back creativity and the act of creation and the active community building and the active connection and sort of tease it out. We may never be able to tease it out because this is going on Instagram and I'm going to talk about it on Facebook, and I'm using marketing platforms like Buzzsprout to put my podcast up, right? So all of our stuff lives in the waters of capitalism 

and social media marketing, and it's a great way to reach people. So I'm not knocking it. It's. What is it to sort of? 

Keep coming back to this idea of why does it matter to me and why does it matter to me inherently separate from what someone else might assign a value to it with money. And I think those are really hard things. I think we live very much in a culture that. Bases so much worthiness on productivity, on production, on the ability to hustle, to create stuff, to, you know, to put stuff out there. I certainly, for myself, I've been just battling this illness for a couple of years and one of the hardest things is feeling like I had a day where I didn't create something, I didn't produce something, I wasn't a productive human being and therefore I'm a failure as a human being. It's really tough. It's a really tough identity that I think we sort of have in the states that I think Europe is a little less of and Canada is like an amalgam of the US and Europe in my mind. So I know other people do it differently and I just know that here it's it's very much steeped in our culture and. I. Part of the reason that I'm here, which is why I'm talking about it, is I'm aware that my perfectionism is a way of sort of believing that all creativity has to be perfectly polished and show no cracks and and already the amazing which. Phenomenally is the exact opposite of what creativity is. Creativity lives in the place where you don't entirely know what you're doing when you're maybe doing it badly when you. Forget the word and then you **** ** and you have a real moment of presence. So this. Paradox of in my own mind I have to be perfect in order to create is actually killing the Creative Act itself. And so I've been thinking a lot about how my own ideas about capitalism and value through monetary 

value, through assignment of a monetary number. Um. **** with my head, you know, and what is it to show up and not try to make money, but just try to? Create and speak and connect and express oneself. 

I'm really hoping that made sense because I feel like my brain went about different places and I'm realizing I don't entirely have language for speaking about capitalism and this idea of of worthiness and value through money. But I just really, this podcast is an invitation to everyone's creativity, to this idea that creativity is a divine act, that we're just as humans meant to. We've been doing it since The Cave days, you know, people painted and stood around fires. Told stories. It is. It is what we do. It is inherent to being human, to desire to express oneself in the various different ways. And so my invitation always is, how do we not just love the people who do it professionally? I'm obsessed with Netflix. I love so much TV. I love so much theater. I love so many people who are doing this professionally. And I think people have a need to do it every day in their lives. And I'm curious about how can we break down those divisions and make all of it. Holy make it all of it purposeful. Make it all of it. If it's an hour of how you spent your day making music, writing a song, and you just put it out there because you wanted to share it, how incredible is that as a gift and how can we revalue that reintroduced purpose and value into that? And maybe you already have that value and purpose. I definitely see people putting stuff up on on. 

I'm thinking of the whatever on on base camp and and sound trap and those kinds of things, musicians, friends who are putting stuff out there. So there are people who are maybe more advanced than I am at this game, but I I'm really curious about how we've lost the ability to just appreciate creation for creation sake, and that's something I'm trying to figure out for myself. 

Hope some of that makes sense. Thank you for joining me. View all my friends.