When Perfection Stands in the Way of Competence

I got scared of blogging.

I remember when I was a senior at Houghton and I was following the blogs of a few friends who went to different seminaries from my program.  I was excited at first to keep up with their lives, how they seemed to be changing and how excited they were about starting the next track in their lives.  I quickly became frustrated: it seemed like their blogs became sermon blogs, and I didn't hear anything else from them except the assignments they were preparing for classes.  It wasn't the same feel, and I (for the most part) quit following them.

When I started this blog in Advent '11, I was determined not to let the same thing happened to me.  I wanted to blog at least every other week, to keep the discipline of writing a part of my (spiritual) life.  Instead, it became exactly what frustrated me about my former peers: a sermon blog.

Much more than I expected to, I loved preaching.  I loved using / finding / feeling my voice in a community, helping and challenging and maybe even changing people (by God's grace!).  I liked to quietly call my community out on some of their ~smaller~ sins.  I liked to challenge people's common (mis)perceptions about God.  I liked to articulate the unique ways that I saw my life of faith.  My dad predicted when I was at Houghton that I would love it: "You've taken all this in like a sponge since you were little, and now you need to start letting some of it out!"

Loving preaching, I started appreciating my own writing.  That should have been good for my blog!

However, I got a lot of very positive feedback on my preaching as well, from peers AND even from professors.  It fed my not-exactly-small vanity.  Since I graduated, I've only written once or twice.  I've attempted and thought about writing many more times, but never actually sat down to write.  My mind was working, but I wasn't applying myself.

Just recently I've started putting all this together.  Essentially, I've realized I quit writing here because I'm not putting up material that has been checked and edited... and most importantly, that has been praised.  In my vain (note the double meaning here) desire to be a good writer - to be a perfect writer - I've become a complete non-writer!

Perfection stands in the way of competence.  The vain desire to be perfect paralyzes effort.  The need for praise inhibits self-esteem.  Fear of failure, or worse yet, success, feeds laziness.  I'm struggling with all of this: in my writing, in my teaching, in my relationships, in my prayer life.  In the words of an inspirational video that made its way through TFA circles at the beginning of the year, I need to give myself permission to suck.  I need to be willing to try and fail.  I need to embrace the laughter that came after the following exchange during my CPE:

Supervisor: "What's the problem with being wrong?"
Me: "You... I'd...  I'd be wrong!"
*~laughter~*

Well, a new season of the church year, a new commitment.  I commit to writing here once a week.