FULL STOP. PERIOD.

If you’re a regular reader of these Notes: Firstly, I apologize. And secondly, you’ll have noticed that I am often a little laissez-faire with my punctuation.
I might throw in a comma, where there is absolutely no real need for a comma. And from time to time, I will put periods – or ‘full stops’ (as they are called back in the old country) – wherever. I. Please.

I like to think of myself as the Martha Stewart of punctuation: tossing wee throw pillows of commas and semicolons around at my leisure.

Anyhoos, it’s not that I don’t see the need for punctuation. I do. I completely do.
When I’m reading a script, or a novel - or even just instructions - I can get very snippy about a misplaced comma, or an ill-judged apostrophe.

But with a novel or a script, there’s usually an editing process, and it’s generally passed before several other people’s eyes before it gets in front of mine.
These wee Notes though, are delivered every Sunday. So the process in delivering them is that pretty much that every week, I delve into the great Hoover bag that is my head, and pull out some random old piece of something hanging about in there, and throw it down with a plethora of random punctuation.

True, I used to get Fergus to edit for me. But it turns out he’s a grown adult now, and so has ‘stuff’ to be doing for his own life. (Honestly, what's the point of giving actual birth to people if it doesn’t mean you completely own every minute of their time?)

Anyway, the long and the short of it is that these Notes are pretty much farm to table, and I rest comfortably in the notion that they’re not perfect ever.

But while I’m on the subject, I do think that perfection is completely overrated. If something is perfect, there is no movement. No change. No growth. I mean, you can have perfect moments and they’re lovely. But they’re temporary. The idea of some continual perfection is like a living death, with everything condemned to remain in exactly the same place.

Also, I find perfect people slightly frightening. (Though to be fair, they’re probably completely horrified by me.) And what even is the deal with Perfectionism? That has to be the scariest of all.

If you look up the definition of Perfectionism, it's categorized as a personality trait that follows in the pursuit of flawlessness. But honestly, I’d really just define it as doubt.

I say that because I only ever need things to be absolutely perfect when I’m anxious about something. And as for pursuing this mythical place called flawlessness, I reckon I’d be more likely to bump into Atlantis first. Whenever I’ve done something perfect in my life, it’s usually been by mistake.

There's freedom in being flawed. Liberation in unintentional blunders.

When my kids were young enough to not be “off doing their actual own stuff,” and were all about teachable moments, I used to tell them that it's not only OK to discover you’ve been wrong, it's also healthy.

Life is a muddled process of learning. How can you ever know you’re right if you can’t allow yourself to have been wrong?

Anyway, you might suspect there’s some kind of story behind my protestations. And you’d be correct.

Basically, I have had one of those weeks where I've been busy doing stuff all the time but nothing ever seemed to get finished. I might get the laundry done but it’s definitely in the dryer longer than it should. I might get the important email written, but then I forget to send it. There are windows that should have been cleaned and seedlings that should have been planted, and I remember about the phone call for the appointment I should have made that day while I’m in my pajamas and just getting into bed. My whole life this week has laughed in the face of the very definition of ‘completer finisher.’ I have been far from perfect.

And yet no young children or animals were harmed in this experiment. And I am still here. Completely imperfectly so.

Each morning I’ve woken up in a flurry of what I will “definitely get done today”, and each night I’ve gone to bed, with a whole load of stuff not done.

Then, on Friday it was Mark’s birthday. Among the gifts he received were a blow torch, a notebook, and a big metal bucket to hold his bee smoker. And believe it or not, these were exactly what he wanted. Then in the evening, I made some Thai food and we ate cake.

It was no magazine cover or stunning Instagram post. We were no vision of perfection. Yet, when I asked him what he thought of his birthday, he said it was “just right.” And though the windows still needed cleaning, and the seedlings still needed planting, I thought it was all ‘just right’ too.

So when I sat down to write this note, the story that came out of the giant Hoover bag of my head was about how I’ve spent this whole week getting mad at myself for not being able to get my act together: Forgetting stuff I meant to remember to fix. Not sorting out things I should have sorted out already. Reminding myself of stuff I’d planned to learn and didn’t, things I should “be better at by now”. I thought about all the noise going on in my head all the time and I heaved a big deep hypocritical sigh.

Because I realized, that despite everything I tell my kids, I somehow seem to be constantly trying to achieve perfection, when I know to my core that perfection - even as a concept - is not only dull but unachievable.

Perfection can only be temporary - displaying itself in sparkly little moments that punctuate the narrative of life. Ephemeral little twinklings where everything is “just right.” And you can totally forget to notice them when you're focused on all the shit you're not apparently achieving.

If you’re a regular reader of these Notes you’ll have noticed that I am often dodgy with punctuation.

And I am. I undeniably am. But I’m definitely going to get better at it. Probably. Maybe. Some time. At some point. If I can just find the space to get round to it.

You see, life is a muddled process of learning.

Full stop. Period.

Till next week
xo

Available on Amazon: (US, UK, AUS, CA).

The Audiobook version is also available on Apple Books and Audible.

Learn more about Lynn’s Story work at YouTellYours.com