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Posts Tagged ‘learning from mistakes’

The Perfectionist’s Cure

Posted in Creativity, tagged , , , , , on 06 Nov 2025| 2 Comments »

Eureka!

As regular visitors are aware, I have a strong perfectionist streak. My sister and I both struggle with it, but I couldn’t tell you if it is nature or nurture that infected us with this scourge. (As with most things, probably a mixture.) Neither of us would ever say that we are perfect, or even that we were close. Perfection, as I’ve often said, is unattainable, but that does not make my inner compulsion to achieve it simply disappear. It does, however, drive me batty.

But I may have found a cure. At least one that shows promise.

When I think about perfectionism, I have to recognize that it is all about control. Control (whether it be of input or environment or technique) and outcomes. And those outcome must be measurable, so they might be compared to the ideal and thereby be found wanting. Naturally, some things lend themselves more readily to this kind of rigor. Maths and engineering, for example, are much easier to control and evaluate. Skills, too, are easier to measure; whether you’re building a cabinet or shooting an arrow, it is clear to see whether the corners are square or the bullseye was hit. When you wander into the more artistic realms, though . . . that’s when it gets sticky. What is a perfect performance of a Bach partita? What is a perfect novel? What is the perfect lasagna recipe?

Trying to achieve perfection in an artistic endeavor is—let me be blunt, here—just plain stupid. And yet, it’s what I’ve tried to do for sixty-odd years. I cannot shake it. I cannot not try to do it perfectly. That partita, that novel, that recipe, I’ve tried, over and over again, to do all of them, without error, without flaw, but each time, be it my fingers, my prose, or my mastery of timing and materials, I have failed and every result has been, well, imperfect. There’s always something, whether I stumble on the high notes, or my books sell like shite*, or there’s a burnt bit on the corner of the dish.

But there’s one thing that all these activities have in common: they don’t fight back. That perfect iteration, that flawless performance, it is out there in the Platonic ether, taunting me, and the only thing keeping me from it is . . . me. My skill. My technique. My concept.

Quite recently, however, I have discovered something of a different nature. An artistic endeavor, to be sure, and something I’ve contemplated (and been warned away from) for a long time, since boyhood, to be honest. It is a creative outlet that is unpredictable, nearly impossible to control, capricious, fickle, and headstrong. Outcomes can be damaged due to environmental variables. Errors quickly become irreparable. And speed in creation is absolutely essential. In short, all the makings of an artistic disaster.

Allow me to present: watercolors.

Yeah. Watercolors. Like those collections of pre-fab paints we had as kids (because they were easier to wash out of our clothes). Those watercolors.

My father was an artist. Some of my earliest memories are of him in his studio, perched on his high wrought-iron chair, the air hazy with the scents of linseed, turpentine, and pipe tobacco. He was a graphic artist by trade, a lithographer by profession, but at home he sketched in pencil and charcoal, and painted in oils. His workplace was a controlled chaos of books on anatomy and art, of canvases stretched and rolled, the whole dominated by a large ink-stained drafting table near the door and an easel further into the room. I remember watching him working on a particular painting, scooping up gobs of titanium white with his palette knife to create an impasto sun over a southwestern desert, saying how much he liked painting in oils because “I can always scrape it off and start over. Not like watercolors. Watercolors do not forgive.”

And they don’t.

My journey in watercolor painting is only a couple of months old, but already I have learned, first-hand, exactly what my father meant. For as long as I work toward mastery of watercolors, for as long as I attempt to control the medium, they will fight me, with every step, every brushstroke. I will never learn how to succeed as a watercolorist. I will only learn how to fail less often.

And that, my friends, is my cure for perfectionism.

Find something that cannot be mastered, something that cannot be controlled but only cajoled, entreated, encouraged to give you what you want. And I don’t mean only watercolors; it could be anything, from raising orchids to fly fishing to coaching Little League. By falling in love with something that will not be controlled, in order to improve, I am the thing that must change, not only by learning to adapt to the quirks and whims of the thing, but by accepting the thing with its quirks and whims, and yes, even because of them.

I will never be a master watercolorist, but having spent just a few brief weeks playing with the medium, learning about it, seeing what it can (and cannot) do, I know that I do not want to be a master watercolorist. I do want to know more, do more, acquire more skill so that I can at least approximate on paper the pictures that I envision, but I know I will struggle to achieve even those modest goals.

Which, to be clear, is my intention. I want to be imperfect, and to be happy with that imperfection. To strive. Not to master. To accept. Not to control.

I only have so many summers left here, and I do not care to waste them dancing to the perfectionist’s tune.

k

*Just a grateful shout-out here, to those who have read my books, including the two people who recently ripped through the Fallen Cloud Saga (Yes, my sales are that low). Thank you, and I hope you enjoyed the books enough to recommend them to others.

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First Meals

Posted in Culture, Food, tagged , , , , , , on 19 Jan 2023| Leave a Comment »

Last week’s post got me thinking about my time in the kitchen.

My father encouraged his kids to learn to cook, by deed—he always cooked Sunday breakfast, manned the grill on cookouts, and was the go-to guy for fried chicken—as well as by word. The fact that my stepmother was, shall we say, not inspired in the ways of food preparation, was additional encouragement for us to learn how to feed ourselves. The lessons didn’t really “take” with my younger brothers, but with my sister and me, they definitely took root.

My first forays into the kitchen were, naturally enough, in supportive roles. Chopping, measuring, mincing, tending. This was useful as it taught me good knife skills, the benefit of mise en place, how to follow a recipe (and when to improvise), and how to accommodate different cooking times for disparate ingredients.

My first solo flight in the kitchen wasn’t a meal, though; it was a dessert, and the result inducted me into the realm of family legend. I was maybe twelve years old, home alone (for some reason) with hours to occupy myself, and being twelve, I wanted something to eat, something sweet, so I decided to make my favorite cake: Angel Food.

Checking the recipe, I made sure we had what I needed. With three growing boys in the house, a dozen eggs was only about half the supply in our pantry, and sugar, flour, and vanilla were also staples close at hand. I’d seen cakes baked before, so I knew the basics. Mix everything together, pour the batter into a form, bake, and a beautifully risen cake comes out. (Old hands will already see the flawed assumption here.)

Working diligently, I separated the dozen eggs, added some cream of tartar, dumped in the sugar, pulled out the French whisk, and started whipping. “Whip until soft peaks form” was the phrase in the recipe. Not having dealt with egg whites before, this was a bit of a puzzle, but I figured it’d become clear in time. I whipped and whipped. I switched hands when cramps set in. I kept whipping. A sense that I was missing something began to bloom in my sous-chef-heart, a vague feeling of being out of my depth. I switched back to my right hand, added a dash of fervor to my motions, and just as my shoulder started to seize up, I saw the mixture begin to change. It began to get foamy. Aha! My courage was renewed and I kept on whipping as the bubbles multiplied, gathered, grew smaller. But “soft peaks?” What did that really mean? Then, I saw what was happening. The foam began to achieve a structure, and the little bubbles would leave a tiny “peak” when I pulled the whisk up. I whipped more, but not too much, as the recipe also warned against achieving “stiff peaks.”

It didn’t look like any cake batter I’d ever seen—yellow, translucent, with a layer of foam across the surface—but (I reasoned) Angel Food cake didn’t look or feel like any other cake, so I was probably okay. When I poured the result into the cake form, it didn’t fill much of it. But (I again reasoned) all cakes rise in the oven, so this one would, too, rising up to fill the form. So, into the preheated oven it went.

My family arrived home just about the time it was ready to come out of the oven. The house smelled like heaven, and everyone was surprised and eager to try my first culinary attempt.

I pulled the form out of the oven and . . . looked down into its depths. The cake hadn’t risen. Not one millimeter. It was no taller than it was when it went in. If anything, it was shorter. Taken out of the form, it was a horror, a ring of translucent yellowish rubber reminiscent of jaundiced aspic. I stared at it. My kid brothers thought it the funniest thing of the year but, being boys, they cut a few “slices” and we tasted it. It was delicious; all the divine sweetness of Angel Food cake, now in a convenient compressed form. It was Angel Food jerky.

It went down in the annals as “Angel Food Flop.”

I learned a lot about cooking that day, one of which is: I’m not a great baker. Baking (to me) is too much like chemistry, where everything needs to be perfect before applying heat. That turned out not to be my style. My style is “cook a bit, taste a bit, correct” helped along by a healthy adaptability when faced with missing ingredients. I rarely cook anything the same way twice; each time I’ll try a tweak or decide that I want a slightly different mix of herbs this time.

Luckily (or not, depending on whether I’m counting calories), I married a woman who is a great baker, and one who can do with baking what I do with entrees: improvise. She gets the craft, knows it intuitively. She knows the arcane characteristics of baking powder, cream of tartar, sugars, egg whites. She measures by sight, rarely uses a recipe, and makes the best damned banana bread I’ve ever had.

I’m grateful for my dad’s encouragement. It taught me the importance of independence and adaptability, and kept me fed during my impoverished young adulthood. It also taught me the generous love language of spending hours in the kitchen and serving up a savory stew to beloved friends and family.

And I will always remember with love those Sunday mornings, a pitcher of orange juice on the table, KSFO on the radio, Dad crooning along with Mel Torme as he made pancakes, eggs, sausage, whatever his kids wanted for breakfast, while Mom slept in a bit longer.

It was his love language, too.

k

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