great things require patience, not perfection.

find solace in taking your time to receive what you truly deserve.

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I’ve always had this terrible habit of rushing things. Maybe it’s the fear of missing out, or maybe it’s the illusion that if I don’t do it now—if I don’t get it right the first time—then I never will. Perfection has haunted me for as long as I can remember. Every time I opened my journal, my thoughts scrambled. I jumped from one worry to another—don’t mess up the date, don’t write too cursive, do you have the exact same pen you used last time? Are you even sure what you’re going to write about? Then I take a breath. It’s just a dumb journal. Nobody is going to read it. Ever. It doesn’t need to be perfect. I shake my head. Loosen my palm. I begin to write.

March 10th, 2025. My day has been pretty good.

No. That sounds horrible. Why did I write that? I rip the page.

March 11th, 2025.

No, wait—I messed up the date. I hate myself.

Maybe you, dear reader, are thinking, “You could’ve just scratched that out.” Well, I could have. But I didn’t. And I never do. That’s why I have about 24 unfinished black leather hardcover journals scattered across my room. Each one with roughly 30 pages left, even though they had hundreds when I bought them. I think you see the problem by now. Learning to accept that not everything needs to be ideal to be great is what finally helped me grow. To heal. Don’t get me wrong—I still have a long way to go. But I’m finally starting to understand the importance of stepping back. Taking a breath. Letting go of the need to control every outcome. And trust me, I know how cliché that sounds. I can already hear someone quoting this and saying, “That’s bullshit. Everybody knows that.” Sure. Everyone knows it. But nobody knows how to actually put it into practice. And that’s exactly what I’m about to tell you.

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So how do you actually put it into practice? How do you stop yourself from ripping the page, from starting over, from convincing yourself that if it’s not perfect, it’s not worth existing? Well here’s what I did. I forced myself to be okay with the mess. I know that doesn’t sound like i reinvented the wheel, but hear me out. Not in some profound, life-changing way. No. I started small. Tremendously small. Like writing a sentence and leaving it there, even if I hated it. Even if it made me cringe. Even if I wanted to throw the entire journal across the room and pretend it never happened. I remember when I first started to acknowledge that and putting it into useI felt this itching need to rip the page out. But I didn’t. I let it sit there, ugly and imperfect. And the world didn’t end. Nobody barged into my room to arrest me for committing a literary crime. The sun still rose the next day.

So I kept going.

I wrote things that made no sense. I let the ink smudge. I crossed words out instead of tearing out the page. I wrote with a different pen halfway through a journal just to prove to myself that nothing bad would happen if the ink wasn’t uniform. And slowly, I started to let go. I won’t lie to you and say I’m magically cured, that I never feel the urge to start over or that I don’t sometimes stare at my work and think, God, this is terrible. I do. I probably always will. But now, I know that terrible doesn’t mean worthless. Imperfect doesn’t mean unimportant. And unfinished doesn’t mean failure. So if you’re like me—if you find yourself chasing perfection so relentlessly that you forget to actually create—try this.

Leave the page. Let the ink smudge. Use the wrong pen.

And remind yourself that the most beautiful things in life were never meant to be perfect.

And here’s the thing -it was never just about the journal. It never is. The journal is just a metaphor. A stand-in for everything else in life that I was too scared to mess up, so I just never did in the first place. How many times have I abandoned something just because it wasn’t perfect from the start?
How many times have I walked away from something good because I convinced myself I wasn’t ready, or worse -because I thought I’d ruin it?
How many times have I been so consumed by the fear of failing that I didn’t even let myself try?

It’s not just journals. It’s relationships, projects, dreams, conversations I should’ve had, risks I should’ve taken. It’s the book I never finished writing, the opportunities I let slip away because I was waiting for the right moment, the perfect conditions. But perfection is a lie.And great things? They don’t happen instantly of course. They don’t show up fully formed and flawless, wrapped in a neat little bow. They require time, patience. They require effort. They require mistakes.

You don’t become a great writer by waiting for the perfect words to come to you—you write terribly until you don’t.
You don’t build strong relationships by saying all the right things at the right time—you communicate, you misunderstand, you figure it out together.
You don’t grow into the person you’re meant to be by having it all figured out from the start—you try, you fail, you learn, you keep going. That’s what patience is. Not just waiting. But trusting. Trusting that even if things aren’t perfect now, even if you’re stumbling, even if you don’t have it all together—you’re still moving forward. You’re still becoming.

So if you’re sitting there, hesitating, waiting for the right time, the right conditions, the perfect version of yourself before you start—this is your sign to stop waiting. Start. Mess it up. Let it be imperfect. Let it take time. There is never a right time.

Sincerely yours

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