Today, and well, frequently in the past, my brain had an idea and one of those stopping forces flagged up saying, "hey, woah there, you need to do this before you can do that, and this is a time-consuming thing, so you better put it off". That idea was to make a blog post on the website which would mainly focus on some pictures. The stopper flag is that I really want to get things watermarked before put them out there. I still have a few pictures up already that haven't been marked yet, but I'll be getting to them shortly.

The thing about watermarks is that those big - STOCK PHOTO - transparent overlay types I find to be a little annoying. That's kind of the point, but in a place like this, it can detract from the content. It takes time to make a nice logo (which I haven't made for my Jeklyn Hyde presence yet) and it takes a bit to align text in a picture in a pleasing way and colour it so it kinda blends in.

But I don't have the time for that today, or maybe not even this month. But if I wait too long, the relevance of the pictures will be a little lost or I might never get to it. The moment will be gone.

But - these aren't forever pictures. Even though I'm not fond of them, I can make up a temporary watermark template pretty quick, slap it on the pictures, and make the post now (welp, it's already tomorrow now, so I guess I'll be working on that post later today, but I did slap on some watermarks to the main pictures up on the home page...) and replace them later once I settle on a logo and all that.

I guess... well, no, not guess... I know that perfectionism gets in the way of getting things done and has in some cases prevented me from even trying. I don't want that to be the case, but it's something I live with. BUT, I don't want to let it stop me from doing things. And my brain is generous enough (and well-trained enough by this point) to make suggestions like the one above. Gentle reminders that it doesn't have to be perfect.

Which is better: Holding off and waiting for the perfect time, which ends up being never because there's no such thing as the perfect time - or - doing the thing and making mistakes, but getting it done (oh and, by the way, you get better at doing things by doing them, so it will be better/easier/faster the next time).

I'm gonna go with option two.

There's a phrase that I keep having to remind myself about:

Necessary and Sufficient.

What is needed to get this thing done? Does it do what it's supposed to do - does it serve its purpose? You have to think about what level of granularity is needed, and what is too much. If you're working with whole numbers and you're going into the thousandths and millionths for something that only needs whole numbers, you're going too deep.

That's what perfectionism does. It cranks up the granularity on things that don't need it.

And oh, how nice it would be to not have that anxiety.

But the flip side is, I often take a lot of pride in my work because I put a lot of effort in to do a thorough job that goes above and beyond. It gets the job done, covers all the bases, and takes into account future interactions.

"Necessary and Sufficient" toys with "bare minimum" territory, but as a perfectionist, my bare minimum is still a higher bar compared to most. So for someone like me, I need that reminder.

The point of the watermarks is.. well, I know what the internet and people are like. In the real world in most places, if you don't chain something down, it will get taken. And even then, some people will come baring chain-cutters. The internet is no different. If anything it's way easier to get away with taking things and passing them off as one's own. To some extent, it's part of human nature.

You might be surprised at how often people will steal other people's pictures to use to catfish people on dating apps. (It's more often than you think)

I put time and effort into my various creations, and don't really want someone impersonating me. So I'd like to take what steps I can to reduce that.

.. I named this post Perfectionism & Procrastination because I liked the alliteration, but I don't actually talk about procrastinating... I'm sure I'll get to it later. (shhhh)

(Perfectionism can lead to procrastination, which cycles right back into the whole "well I didn't do the thing again" situation.)

Anyway. Go watch this TED talk by Mel Robbins. It's already on my Inspiration post, but I'm sure I'll make another post about it here soon.