I made a mistake.
I’ll spare you the sordid details of where I work and what I do outside of writing, but I had been tasked with setting up for an event to celebrate our company reaching a milestone anniversary.
It involved setting up a meeting area, arranging the cake and flowers and other desserts and balloons in such a way that they could be easily photographed. There was to be a speech and a video.
The big day arrived – the cake arrived, the arrangements were perfect, the entirety of the company arrived to hear the CEO’s speech and partake in the celebrations.
Everything was perfect….EXCEPT.
Except when it was time to play the video I neglected to double-check the audio output. The video quality played smoothly, but because the audio didn’t reach the room speakers, the music played softly and pitifully from the laptop in all its tinny glory.
I was mortified, but I didn’t want to restart the video so I let the room play on, thinking it wouldn’t be noticeable (it was).
The part of the story I didn’t mention was the other individual who usually assists with these types of events was on vacation.
So all the while I was failing, I imagined the thought creeping into everyone’s head “This wouldn’t have happened if X was here.”
And you know what? They’re probably right. This audio oversight would have probably been double- and triple checked to be avoided, and everything would have gone off without a hitch, like they usually do when X is present.
But you know what? I’m not X.
I made a mistake. It sucks. I may very well hear about it afterwards.
But I’m over it. I’m not perfect.
I’m not perfect at my job. At the very least, I strive to be competent.
I try to take solace in the fact that everything else was okay in the event. After all, it’s human nature to zero in on the one thing that goes wrong out of the numerous things that go right.
I think perfect is overrated anyway. When I was a kid I tried to be perfect in school.
Perfect is boring. Infalliable is not me.
Unless you’re a surgeon or a pilot, I don’t think perfection should be a necessary facet of your personality.
Nowadays when I see perfection, I get suspicious. Like, what amount of time and energy was intentionally devoted to project this image, to avoid any perceived flaws?
I was chatted up by someone who had too-perfect hair. That seems like a bizarre nitpick, but it was a physical red flag that carried over into how they attempted to socialize. Everything they said, every mannerism, felt rehearsed, disingenuous, and inauthentic.
Sometimes perfection can be a deterrent, a symptom of a gross character flaw.
And yet…I still want to be it, sometimes.
Maybe not so much in my day job, but in my writing. I still want to turn that perfect phrase, elicit that perfect reaction, and reach that perfect audience with my words.
I’m not perfect. And perfection might be a nice benchmark to have in how you conduct yourself and your business, but I’m not out to win any awards in my position. Sometimes I just want to be accepted for being messy, mistake-prone me.
But I will double- and triple-check that audio in the future.