the pressure to be brilliant: when it's never good enough

an ode to perfectionism and the dreamers within us. show up for yourself

It’s somewhat of a joke in my family, my lackluster excitement over Big Things. When I got my acceptance email to university, I thought great then I moved on. Today, I fight the urge to throw away entire writing projects the moment I read one bad sentence or section.

It’s not good enough. Might as well trash it, right?

There is a lot of pressure put on us — a collective whole — as kids to be successful, productive members in society. Everyone wants to be Number One because they (marketers) tell us to. There’s also a lot of internal pressure we put on ourselves to do the same. In some, it causes them to act out in rebellion. In others, we feel shamed and small. We feel like a college acceptance is a normal Tuesday afternoon.

There is so much that writing has been teaching me: