Not Perfetc-- a daily practice post

This post relates to my post yesterday about playing. It is also inspired by the typos and sentence fragments of yesterday's post.

Part of my practice with these posts is to publish live--no rereading, no editing. It's an experiment with getting work out there, making it public, and getting over myself. This means it won't ever be perfect writing--whatever that might mean.

For me, embracing the idea of error and mess as part of the practice makes daily (okay, near-daily) writing and yoga possible. This is also why I love that writers revise; it gives us permission to make messes and mistakes first.

Explaining her style of yoga, my teacher Melissa Martinez-Chauvin (http://www.melissamcyoga.com/) said , "it's about the healthy pose, not the perfect pose."

And thank god for that. If I thought I had to be perfect each time I sat down to write or unrolled my mat, I'd probably stop doing my practices.

The academic writing expert Robert Boice has shown that perfectionist writers have less influence than writers who are willing to let things be a little messy. They publish and are cited more. I wonder if they might not also be happier.

Recalling my post about play, I'd like to suggest that there's something a bit fun about having permission to be messy, to be imperfect. Embracing imperfection allows work to happen and might just make it something that's pleasurable to do.

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