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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   2798 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for January 13, 2023

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Just a fun anecdote about petty perfectionism.

I have a completely insignificant personal instagram where I only post photos of food I cook. I post my high-effort food as posts, and low-effort food as stories.

I am on my 98th post now, and have decided to have a post with my face in it for the 100th. I am not anonymous or faceless or anything. Just that I'd gotten used to not having my face in my posts and 100 seemed like a nice landmark.

But that makes my 99th post kinda significant. The last of an old era. So for a good 2 months, I have been cooking like a madman, and everything goes into a story, because it isn't good enough.

So here I am, agonizing about something completely stupid.

Have a good laugh at my expense.

This brand of perfectionism sounds familiar to me. My primary hobby is music, and I once spent an entire year (Sep 2019 - Oct 2020) working on a track. I was hellbent on the idea of making a hyper-detailed track where no two bars were alike, and aggressively cut everything that fell short of my very lofty expectations. After I was done with making it, I couldn't listen to it for a few months because I had heard it so much over that year that I was utterly sick of it. But despite the whole process driving me nuts, I'm now trying out something similar again with yet another track (which has been in the works ever since March of 2021 and is still not completed as of yet).

I've also tried my hand at story-writing, and I've tried to make sure that everything I write in it conforms to real-world science (sometimes spending days or months researching a specific topic to make sure I understand it properly enough to write about it). The sheer amount of music and writing and even game projects that I've thrown out because they failed to meet my absolutely unreasonable expectations would turn your hair white.

I relate my man. So many fully written blogs that I refuse to publish because they read like shit to me.

The motte is a great place place for me to dump out my trains of thought. At least it lives somewhere real then.

My life bucketlist has 'composing an album' on it, and I am a 100% sure that it will end up being the most challenging thing I've ever done.

couldn't listen to it for a few months

Hope you've come around to liking it. Sounds like a lot of love went into it.

conforms to real-world physics, science and biochemistry

Ahh man, I can't imagine how nightmarish this must be.

"Perfect is the enemy of good enough" is a fairly common quote.

I'd suggest a corollary: "Bad is better than nothing".

tho to be fair, this already exists: "Anything worth doing is worth doing badly." — G. K. Chesterton

My life bucketlist has 'composing an album' on it, and I am a 100% sure that it will end up being the most challenging thing I've ever done.

I've made (and released) a few albums myself. I think it's a good undertaking if you've got even a passing interest in composition or production - despite everything I've said about the laboriousness of the process, it's also very satisfying when things do go the way you want.

Hope you've come around to liking it. Sounds like a lot of love went into it.

Yeah, it's now one of my favourite tracks I've made.

Would you be willing to share it ? If not, I am just glad you came to love it.

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