Breakthrough, or Break Down?
Among my gaggle of children, I have given the world a real thinker. An overthinker, actually. He spends a lot of time on singular ideas and then that idea fans out like hoarfrost on a freezing-cold windshield until the entire windshield is covered with icy branches and he can’t see the road ahead. He perseverates, which leads to inaction, which leads to disappointment. This is an actual psychiatric (and all too common) condition: perfectionism. (And probably some undiagnosed ADHD thrown in for fun.)
It’s a not-insignificant Sharpie stain on my DNA that I have thus unwittingly shared with this sweet, sweet boy. As such, we have a lot of late-night talks when the house is quiet because we uniquely understand one another’s tics and hang-ups—perfectionists speak a sad language among our ranks. We understand how fear of failure can be like a blast from a freeze-ray gun, stopping us in our tracks. Self-sabotage is a huge part of this picture, as is anxiety about stuff other people might find trivial and manageable. And when the cheerleaders in our lives say “Power through! You got this!” thanks very much for the lovely support but powering through isn’t just hard—it can be downright impossible.
But as my lad and I were talking the other night, I reminded him of a story that I keep tucked in the back of my head for those moments when I am feeling like all this is for nothing. (Yes. Writers and creatives in general often experience this, especially when work goes unbought or even worse, pirated, and all that time and energy and money and pain is literally for nothing.)
Suburbia, where we live, hides a lot of talent behind PTA meetings and manicured lawns and minivans full of hockey gear. I was lucky to meet one of these hidden talents, another mom among the sea of parents waiting outside our children’s classroom. After months of chatting at school pickup, a friendship formed, and she shared that she was an artist.
Soon after, she invited me to hang out at her house after the kids were dropped off. She would make crappy but surprisingly tasty instant coffee and then we’d settle in, her in front of her easel, me at a corner of her paint-splattered table with my laptop so I could work on my book.
Day after day, this friend would paint and paint and paint, and I would be amazed at the things she managed to transmit from her brain to her hand through the brush and onto the canvas—I will never NOT be amazed by artists—and I would sing her praises and help her get ready for art shows and drive her around in my own minivan because she had a tiny car that didn’t fit all her canvases, and she in turn would cheer me on and read pages fresh off the printer and she was there when my first finished book arrived and it was nice. Really, really nice.
For nearly three years, I went to her house almost every weekday. She would throw color on canvas, I would punch through plot holes, and we would drink too much Folger’s Crystals, but it didn’t matter because we’d found some creative peace in a place where women of childbearing age were dispatched to juggle careers and offspring and fold laundry and drive carpool until they were too old to lift laundry baskets or make dinner without risking fire and were thus forced into retirement and moved into their daughter-in-law’s basement suite and outfitted with adult diapers and handed the remote to watch reruns because our daughters-in-law are too cheap to spring for Netflix or Disney+.
This painter and I found a bit of creative space in an environment that wasn’t always welcoming of such things. And, in a word, it was awesome. Watching my friend paint something new every day was brilliant and enlivening. She didn’t let fear rule what she tried—she just tried it. Fear was not given a seat at the table, at least not long enough to get through the appetizer.
And then one day, something amazing happened.
She painted a forest scene, trees in the distance, river rocks caressed by rushing water, all of it inspired by the snaking waterway that borders our neighborhood.
It was incredible.
THIS PAINTING was her breakthrough moment.
It was like watching a miracle happen in real time.
Sure, her paintings before that were splendid and pleasing and she was my friend so of course, I supported anything she did.
But THIS one … wow. It was a whole different level. Something BIG happened with that painting, and I watched it unfold.
This friendship has since died, which still makes me sad, but life is hard and things happen and it seems suburban friendships have a shelf life as kids grow and marriages end and priorities change. I did grieve the loss of those days when we’d hang out in the weak sunlight filtering through her winter-dirty kitchen windows while I chased characters up trees and threw rocks at them and my friend would talk to herself in front of that big, blank canvas.
I will never forget the feeling of watching her breakthrough happen, though.
Malcolm Gladwell talks about 10,000 hours to master a given skill. This friend had done ten times that in her lifetime of being a creative, but that one painting, of rocks and water and trees and ferns and moss … it changed everything.
I told my son this story, how my painter friend got up every day and picked up her brush and didn’t let perfectionism get in the way and didn’t listen to the people in her life telling her she would never be successful as an artist and instead of perseverating on a single detail or on something she had no control over, she stood in front of that canvas and the canvas after that until she had a museum’s worth of paintings, and she worked and worked and worked, until BAM! BREAKTHROUGH.
Get up every day ready to do battle. Pick up the brush. Dust off the canvas. Find a new way to show the world who you are and what you have to say.
You cannot know when your breakthrough moment is on its way. What if you quit on a Tuesday, not realizing that your breakthrough moment is scheduled to arrive Thursday afternoon at 1:34 p.m. after that stale glazed doughnut and fourth cup of terrible coffee? Or maybe your breakthrough moment is five years away, on a Sunday after you’ve had your heart broken (again) and your work is the only thing keeping you breathing and you pick up the metaphorical paintbrush and that breakthrough moment hits you so hard in the head, you forget how to spell your own name for a second.
Are you willing to risk missing THAT because you let the perfectionism win?
No. No, you are not.
And neither am I.
Keep going.
Keep going.
Keep going.
