Less than perfect

So I’m doing a show after all.

The problem with me (and I might not be alone in this) is that I have a hard time imagining anything between close to perfect and nothing at all.

I’d been planning to do a first show featuring material from my columns, and it was overwhelming. A fully realized show involves a lot of preparation and getting every detail down all at once. A close-to-perfect show requires a ton of rehearsal and usually a lot of help from others to make it happen.

When I got a grasp of what “close to perfect” would involve, I realized I had set myself up for an almost impossible task. I do this with other things, large and small.

I want to stop eating sweets. But then I eat one small sweet and ruin my perfect record of no sweet eating, so I might as well have a piece of cake. What does it matter? Perfect isn’t possible.

I was thinking the same way about this show. I knew I would be completely crazy if I tried to memorize 9,000 words and perform for the first time in almost five years in front of a full house with music and light cues and costume changes and a video crew catching every less-than-perfect moment. It was too much. I felt enormously relieved when it didn’t come together.

But after I got to Mexico, a new idea started to emerge. What if I tried the less-than-perfect approach? What if I didn’t memorize 9,000 words, but only a few hundred, and read the rest? What if I did an abbreviated sample of the show, stayed in one costume, skipped the music, and invited a few friends to come and see it for free? I would still get some video to use for promotion. It would be less than perfect, but it would happen, and I could make the next performance a bit better. And so on.

As soon as the less-than-perfect idea took hold, everything fell into place in a moment. Now I’m doing a show after all.

It’s just a baby show. I’m advertising it as a “soft opening,” as a “no bells or whistles” show. It will be only 30 minutes long, and I will have a videographer I just met in town, named Alejo, come to the theater to videotape. And I am very happy I am doing it.

The theater was delighted to host me. Alejo was eager and professional and affordable. Rehearsing the script was easy and stress-free because I knew I did not have to keep all those words in my head. If I needed them, they were right there in front of me.

And, best of all, it all started to sound like fun. What had seemed like a terribly scary and ambitious thing turned into a fun experiment.

“Perfection is the enemy of progress,” Winston Churchill famously said. I would also add that nothing close to perfection is even possible unless I am first willing to be less than perfect.

So I am embracing less than perfect today.

And here’s the funny thing: The people coming to see my less-than-perfect show seem excited. Getting in on something in the early stages, with a few bumps in the road, when everything is not all smooth and shiny, can be fun. It’s new. It’s fresh. It’s a little scary. It’s less than perfect.

I’m thinking there’s a lot in my life that would be better less than perfect. I’m thinking a less-than-perfect life might be the best life of all.

Till next time,

Carrie