By Claire Smith

I think a lot about Ira Glass’ advice to young creatives about taste and the gap between the good taste that got you into creative work, and the quality of the stuff you currently produce. How so many people give up because that gap in quality and taste is hard to stomach. But the only way to close the gap between your killer taste and your average work is to keep creating. The work you make catches up at some point. The gap between my taste and my work is cavernous at the moment and it makes me not want to write. I’d rather do nothing than do something poorly.

This perfectionism is such a chokehold. It’s a step for me to call this perfectionism, as a person who has previously told counsellors that I am far too fine with leaving unwashed dishes in the sink and going out with unbrushed hair to be a perfectionist. Turns out that looking beyond the superficial means admitting that there are hidden perfectionist traits lurking deep within me, like the crumb-encrusted plates currently submerged in my overflowing sink. Quite simply, I think nothing is good enough. I think I stutter out sentences, half-formed and limping, and feel people’s eyes widen in horror as they try to decode whatever I am trying to say. I remember getting so tongue-tied trying to talk about my favourite painting because I was so intimidated by the person who asked about it. I still cringe about how ridiculous the sentences were that left my mouth, how I undersold my enthusiasm and quickly changed the subject to push any attention away from myself.

I recently opened a document on my home computer with its myriad of folders from 2013/4, and all it said was “speak up, dance and don’t fuck idiots.” It seems like pretty good advice. Forget my audacious aims of routines and nights of good sleep with freshly flossed teeth. I am allowed to be unruly as I want to be. I am allowed to not learn my lesson after the fifth time of drinking too much, as long as I am not hurting anybody. Not hurting anybody does include myself, but one night of drinking isn’t going to hurt, neither is not moisturising twice a day or imbibing trace amounts of dairy.

There are things more important than perfection. Everything in fact. People who know how it feels to be insecure twenty year olds are getting us hooked on hydration, meditation and moderation – some with the best intentions, some with only economic concern. We’re not making too much of fuss because we’re too busy worrying about the minutia. Maybe the creative work I’m producing and the face I’m presenting to the world is in serious need of some finessing, but obsessing over these little things is keeping me distracted from the goal of just doing something and showing up. I remind myself constantly that the first step is showing up, and the rest is all a bonus.

Look at me laying down some truths that have got me through my last years of education. Ripping off a few band-aids. That’s what writing can be: letting things breathe and letting things go. Peeling off the plaster and being like “Woah… Gross.” But we all bleed, right? Exposing my weird so we all feel a little more comfortable in our imperfections. Accepting that I’m a pimple on this planet, which is a giant ball of water hurtling around the sun anyway. Acceptance in the face of rejection and uncertainty. It’s worth a try. So come on, rip off the band-aid. Scabs are the original clickbait.

Help resurrect the Gender Agenda website. University life is full of over-edited and competitive articles. Bring me your midnight ramblings, the poetry you save on the notes of your phone when you’re inebriated, in the toilet cubicle, too inside your own mind. Did you just take a few absolutely sick selfies that you want to compare to renaissance art, a la tabloid-art-history? A bunch of haikus about how annoying I am? I want to read them. Gender Agenda is taking all this and more that can fit beneath the umbrella of gender identity and intersectional feminism from women and non-binary people. This is your invitation to bridge the gap and take up space – perfection is not necessary here.

Send your submissions to womens@cusu.cam.ac.uk