This is a beginning.
Beginnings are hard.
Since 2020, I have an organiser which, for the first time ever, is actually helping me get organised. It’s the first time in my life that I’ve not abandoned a planner. Today is December 13, 2022 and there are only a few blank pages left. After weeks of looking at fancier options, I just ordered an identical model: grey cloth-bound A5, dotted.
To stick with it, I needed some rules. I drew monthly and weekly spreads, scheduling every day with lists and checkboxes, but it turned out that many days remained blank. I stuck with the monthly spreads but ended up with detailed agendas only for particular days, interspersing them with my special to-do lists and focus boards, and an occasional illustration. Another of my rules — no mindless doodling — got broken early on. The first page after the February 2020 spread is covered in a repeated sentence:
Done is better than perfekt.
Done is better than perfect.
Done is better than perfect.
I’ll spare you the actual number of “done-is-better-that-perfects” written in my ever changing hand. (And yes, the first one has a spelling mistake.) The important point is that in the past, breaking a rule, let alone making a mistake, would have disastrous consequences. Cast aside, the notebook would become another relic of another of my flash-in-the pan ideas.
Done is better than perfect.
I turned the page.
The planner saw me through the pandemic, through all of my house renovations to date, nearly two years of therapy and writing my first book. One of the last to-do items in the worn-out notebook reads “patreon”. One of those deceivingly innocent, single-world notes which actually encompasses a tonne of work, although starting Patreon wasn’t especially hard. I created an account, wrote down a bio and agonised for way too long over graphics which came out shit anyway. Then, the real work began.
Doubts, doubts, doubts. Impostor syndrome. More doubts. Do I even want to put myself out there like this? What if nobody signs up? What if it’s a flop? What if my writing is bad?
Since I have spent enough on therapy to buy a small (used) car, I might as well put some of what I’ve learned into action. Done is better than perfect, and I have to make a start. So, here it is. Welcome. This is an experiment. A way to keep me writing after I had finished with Born to Climb. (Yes, there’s another book in the works but, since I’m at the research stage, there's actually not that much writing involved.)
At 36 and with a diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder, change doesn’t come easily. I grew up admiring Kapuściński and Krall, and my grandmother — a newspaper journalist of six decades. In a sense, I still haven’t come to terms with... read more now →
