Good Isn't Good Enough

Maggie Knox

The other day I was having a conversation with my dad about my debilitating tendency to strive for perfection in everything. My family is VERY aware of my obsessive need to live life without any flaws. Being a perfectionist sounds like a positive thing, but actually, my desire for perfection is time-consuming and a trigger for my anxiety. I struggle when things don’t turn out the way I expected them to. Sometimes I get so upset about the outcome of something that I planned or created that I either become irrationally angry, start crying, or both. I know that may sound childish or silly, but it can be difficult to deal with my emotions when all I’m ever worried about is whether or not something will go wrong, or how to fix something, or why the people I care about didn’t say anything about my new art pieces or good grades.

One of my majors here at Pitt is Studio Arts. For some people, that may sound laid back and simple (like, why don’t you do it then?) but it really isn’t. A lot goes into creating any piece of art: planning, trial and error, class critiques, constructive criticism from professors, lots of

experimenting, and long hours. I mean, yeah, I don’t have to study for big exams, but I get

judged almost every single day based on my talent. In class critiques (our equivalent to exams),

you show your class your work, and then they all judge you and tell you if they think it’s good or not. For someone who feeds off of artistic and academic validation, in my mind, I need to be better than everyone else in the room. And being the best means everything is perfect. I have thrown away drawings that took me around 10 hours to make, the night before a critique because something about the piece wasn’t good enough. I’ve then had to redraw the entire piece from scratch before my class at 10 a.m. the next day. Even after I did all of that, I still wasn’t completely satisfied with the result. I basically set myself up for failure every single day because I hold myself to such impossible standards. My therapist tells me that I have an “all-or-nothing” mentality about life which means that everything is either completely perfect or completely awful, and it only takes one small thing to derail my entire day. My need for everything to be perfect doesn’t just apply to my art classes and school, however; perfectionism is a dark cloud looming over my head all day, every day. 

And it’s exhausting.

When I was in elementary school, I used to do this thing where I would “reset my life.” It means that whenever I said something weird, sat down in my chair awkwardly, answered a

question in class wrong or set my pencil down in a weird way, I would give myself a clean slate and start over. Usually, I would shake my head, and then the thing I did “wrong” was gone. After I did that, I would say to myself, “1..2..3..Go” and every mistake I made up to that very moment was erased, and I could start fresh. I am now very aware what I was doing—and a lot of the things I continue to do—are symptoms of OCD. Recently, I came to terms with this

information, and although it was difficult, it makes a lot of sense and explains my constant

anxiety regarding failure.

Failing in life is probably my biggest fear. My anxiety and perfectionism are not only a result of the fear that I have, but also from a sense of internalized pride. I don’t like not being the best at whatever I’m doing: which is unreasonable. I only hold myself to certain impossible standards because I selfishly think that I’m the only one who could possibly ever meet those standards. If you ever wanted to know a good way to lose friends, thinking you’re better than everyone else will help. I guarantee you that a majority of the other people in my studio arts courses don’t enjoy being in class with me because they can probably sense that I think I’m better than them. They can tell by the way I present my work in class exercises and by the way I comment on their work in critiques. The other step to losing friends is to completely shut down when things don’t turn out the way you expected them to and blame everyone else for what happened, which I do almost every other day.

Being a perfectionist affects almost every single aspect of my life. I can’t keep friends, I have bad time management skills, I can be a little selfish, and I’m really tired. But I’m also responsible for the stress that I put myself under. I think realizing these things about myself has been eye-opening and helpful, so I’m choosing not to beat myself up over the person I’ve become. I don’t think I’m a bad person. I don’t want people to think that I’m mean, a bitch, or someone with a big ego. I really just want people to think I’m kind. And I really want myself to know that my good is good enough.

Edited by Naomi Bastiampillai and Kate Castello