I’ve been taking some improv classes lately, and having an absolute blast while learning a lot. Including something I now accept as a truism:

Improvisational theater is like boot camp for perfectionists.

Only waaaaaaaaay more fun.

Never in my life have I been so pointedly challenged to loosen up and just try things. To trust that I have creative ideas inside me which will spontaneously emerge when I stop trying so damn hard to dig them up and force them out.

(Yes, I find improv even more challenging in that respect than NaNoWriMo. Though the latter is pretty much the former, done via writing.)

Here’s another truism for you, which is definitely the case in improv.

If you try too hard to be interesting, you’ll probably be boring.

It’s like the folks who try to call out clever titles when the actors ask the audience for a location and a relationship between two people for their next scene. There’s always a wise guy who tries to impress his friends by calling out, “A priest and a nun in a whorehouse!” But the (sad excuse for a) joke is already in the title—there’s nowhere for the actors to take it even if they wanted to.

Interestingly enough, the converse is also true. What you think will be boring is usually pretty interesting.

When I started improv classes, I understood intellectually that I was supposed to relax and go with the flow, but I didn’t know how to actually do it. All my life’s training had been in exactly the opposite direction—prepare well and know exactly what you’re doing when you go into a situation.

In the beginning, this resulted in some spectacularly dull acting on my part. Often it still does.

But if you stick with improv long enough (and I know I’ve only scratched the surface), you begin to have little breakthroughs, and occasionally big ones. I clearly remember the day I had my biggest one so far.

My breakthrough came the day I was told to be deliberately uninteresting.

Our instructor was teaching us to create a “platform”—a quick establishment of place, situation, and relationship when you’re starting a scene. It feels very awkward to stand there making up dialogue with someone on a bare stage when you have no idea where you are or who you are to each other. A platform grounds the players (not to mention the audience, if there is one), giving you something to grab hold of and work with.

So you walk in and pretend to pick up a bowling ball, sight down the lane, and roll. Then you turn around, notice your fellow player walking toward you, and say “Hey, Grandpa, you’re late,” as he mimes lacing up his bowling shoes. Maybe with shaking fingers, if he’s paying attention.

Or your partner walks out and leans against an imaginary railing, looking out over the heads of the audience. You join her holding a couple of “drinks,” hand her one, sigh, and say, “Thanks for inviting me come on this cruise. I really needed a vacation.”

That’s all it takes to know who and where you are before you get to see where the scene takes you.

On this particular day in class, the instructor had us go up in pairs, with one person sitting on the sofa (we do have a few simple props) eating an imaginary meal. (This is called “space-object work.”) The other would simply sit down on the other side of the sofa, pick up an equally imaginary magazine and leaf through it.

That was it. If we were too interesting or started creating a story out of it, she stopped us and had us do it again until we were sufficiently boring.

It was the first time I was ever truly able to relax on stage.

The feeling was tremendously liberating, like a backpack full of iron ore had dropped from my shoulders.

And the weird thing? It was utterly fascinating to watch each other do these simple actions and nothing else.

It’s a strange paradox. We try to be interesting and we’re tiresome. We think we’re doing something incredibly dull and we draw attention.

Why does this happen?

I think it’s because we like the familiar. We like things we can relate to personally. In improv, for instance, most people would rather watch a showdown between the overbearing boss and the fed-up employee than a scene on the planet Zorgon with orange-skinned aliens speaking in gibberish.

This is true in life, too. We like it when things are understandable, relevant, meaningful to us.

We also like it when things are genuine and not forced. And most of us have pretty good B.S. detectors. Don’t you?

In social situations, your insecurity (and don’t worry, we all have it) probably tells you that you need to work hard to fascinate others. But that’s just not true. You don’t need to be the life of the party, constantly telling jokes and outrageous stories. All you need to be appreciated is to be real.

I learned how to relax on stage.

You can do the same on the stage of your life.

Just relax and be your own unique self. Trust me—that’s interesting enough.

Life is one long improvisation. Don’t make it so hard on yourself. You don’t have to deliberately try to be boring, like we did in class…because if you’re simply you, in all your everyday glory, I guarantee you won’t be. You’ll shine.

You know how sometimes you can be in love with the idea of something but not take any action on it?

That’s how I’ve been about gardening for a long time.

I live in a rental property, so outdoor gardening isn’t permitted. I could do it indoors except that we’re not allowed to drill holes for things like shelves or hanging planters, and the two cats pretty much prohibit having plant life any lower than head height.

But last month I heard about San Francisco ’s Kitchen Garden Project, which inspired me to rethink things. I realized that I could set up a free-standing shelf unit on our minuscule front porch. So I did that, and then I went to Hayes Valley Farm on 10/10/10 (the day of the initiative) to pick up my free seedlings and mulch.

One month later, here’s some of what’s growing so far!

I’m hoping, in particular, that the broccoli and the carrots make it to their full growth. The broc because it’s my favorite vegetable (well, okay, other than potatoes—preferably in chip form), and the carrots because they’re a tiny, round variety and I’m really curious to see what they look like! I promise I’ll post pictures of whatever grows.

Have you ever heard of Kickstarter? It’s an awesome website through which people and organizations can raise funds for their creative initiatives—they set a goal and write a web page about it, and then try to get enough pledges to fund the project. If they don’t make their goal, no money changes hands, but if they do, they can make some amazing things happen.

Yesterday I found out that Hayes Valley Farm, the volunteer-operated community farm where I got my free garden starter kit (and which, incidentally, is located on top of a closed freeway on/off ramp—the ultimate in recycling, how cool is that?) has only until Sunday to raise the money it needs to fund its continuing projects. As of this writing, they’re almost there!

If you’d like to check it out and maybe even pitch in a bit (if they go overtheir requested amount they get to keep that, too), here’s a link to their Kickstarter page. And here’s one to the farm itself. Where it’s highly likely I’ll be going back to volunteer and learn some more.

Meanwhile, I’m proud of myself. In years past, I would have felt the need to check out at least 3-4 books from the library on home gardening, study up on our local soil and weather patterns, do complex calculus to determine what pot size I’d need for each vegetable, create a detailed shopping list for the plants and supplies, etc., etc. before feeling confident enough to begin.

I love the fact that I was able to let go of the need to be “perfectly” informed and ready, and just wing it. It’s a liberating feeling, even for so small a project.

I don’t know what will finally emerge from all my pots, but it feels great—empowering yet tender at the same time—to nurture along some green, growing things. And if I’m lucky, I’ll get to eat at least some of them. When they hopefully will be tender.

Turns out it really is possible to do things and have them work out (well, at least so far) without having a grand plan!

I’m going out into left field today to do something I haven’t done before here on PMI. I’m reviewing an album.

I could try to force-fit it to the blog’s “overcoming perfectionism” theme by saying something like, “Look! It might not be 100% perfect in every possible way, but that didn’t stop the artist from releasing it anyway! Bravo!”

Except that I’d never write something so terribly cheesy. Aren’t you glad?

I’ve been a huge Peter Gabriel fan for a very long time. And if you know anything about how the man works musically, it’s a very collaborative process. For many years, one of his primary collaborators has been David Rhodes, known mainly as the band’s guitar player.

But to the discerning ear and long-time fan, David has always been much more than that. He has offered his strong vocals, mature musical sensibilities, deft technique, and thoughtful songwriting skills to Gabriel’s recording and touring operations for well over two decades now.

Bittersweet, David Rhodes’s first solo album (not to mention his current tour—more on that later), proves beyond a doubt that he can hold his own under the main spotlight as well.

Folks, this is a damn good album.

 It starts quietly with “Reality Slips,” a deceptively gentle opener which showcases the raw clarity of David’s voice, a lovely surprise after hearing him in the background for so many years. The song gradually builds in drive and density, and just when you think the guitar is fading out at the end, it turns instead to a melodic, then searingly gritty solo. Now that’s the way to start an album.

Next is “Down by the River,” one of the sweetest-sounding songs about a certain rather depressing subject I’ve ever heard. Dominated by David’s very forward-in-the-mix vocals, the simplicity of the melody lets the listener become caught up in the flow (river pun absolutely intended) of the narrative.

“Just Two People” starts out with a guitar sound as fuzzy as a pair of dice tossed over the rearview mirror. The entire song is a great example of the way David uses his guitar like a paintbrush, knowing exactly where to stipple in some subtle sounds, where to lay down a straight melodic line, where to spread a rough wash of power, and—most importantly—how to blend all these effects into a harmonious whole.

“Crazy Jane” is sheer delight, from the gently chugging rhythm to its delicate melodic flourishes to the vivid character of Jane herself and the singer’s relationship with her. (“I want to see her again, I want to make daisy chains.”) This exquisite little gem would be my pick for a first single from the album.

My own favorite song (as of this writing) is the straight-ahead yet perfectly understated rocker, “All I Know.” Why? Two words—the grit and the groove. Mmmm!

Anyone remember album sides?

This is where I’d say that Side 2 begins if such a statement still had any meaning. Hah. Does that make me officially old now?

“If It Could Only Be That Easy” has a slip-slidy tempo that meshes with the plaintive vocals to create a wistful and evocative mood piece.

Then comes “Monster Monster,” which is, I’ve got to admit, my least favorite song on the album. Just my personal taste—it’s psychological self-exploration (which I like), cast into the metaphor of a children’s tale (which is what doesn’t really grab me). Musically speaking, though, it’s a fine song, with a slinky beat and some devilishly clever and alliterative lyrics.

The intro to “There’s a Fine Line” establishes an appealing, slightly off-kilter rhythm and kicks off a bouncy-sounding song addressed to someone who’s having a bit of a hard time with life. The poignant lyrics (“You don’t smile anymore, you don’t joke anymore, you look broken and sad”) and bright, up-tempo melody make for an interesting contrast. I adore the vocal harmonies in the chorus—they hit my nerves with the same kind of delicious pleasure/pain tingle of fingernails scraped gently down the back.

“One Touch”  is a smoldering, intense love (or maybe lust?) song, plain and simple. I love the way the tension builds during the restraint of the rhythmic guitar in the verses but finds its release during the chorus.

But I don’t have to tell you about this song—I can show you. The album version is much more fully fleshed out instrumentally, because here it’s just David and his guitar on stage (if you watch carefully, you’ll see that the “offstage” rhythm guitar is a part he records, then sets to loop in the background as he plays another part over it). But check out this video from the European leg of David’s tour earlier this year:

Bonus Video! One Touch

The album closes with its title track, “Bittersweet.” It’s an instant mood-changer (think the late-night languor of a piano lounge, but with much more intimacy), and its deeply introspective lyrics tenderly bring the album to a sense of emotional completion, right down to the final soft “wah” of the guitar.

David is currently opening for Cyndi Lauper on her “Memphis Blues” tour, and you can find the list of tour dates (and a great deal more about David, while you’re at it) at All Things David Rhodes.org. (Note that there is also a link from the news page to Cyndi Lauper’s official site, in case of any changes.)

Oh, and the album itself? I got my copy of Bittersweet through the German branch of Amazon, because it hadn’t yet been released in the U.S. You can preview (prelisten?) to snippets of each song there, too.

But the good news is that it has just been released on iTunes. It’s also available through Care Music, where you can also get the album art.

(Incidentally, none of these are affiliate links—I’m a fan, plain and simple.)

Bittersweet is a fantastic album that deserves as wide an audience as it can get. It’s a fresh solo debut made all the more wonderful by the fact that it’s from a seasoned musician with many solid years of song-crafting under his guitar strap.

That craft shows plainly, and it is a very fine thing to hear.

I was going to write about something else today, but Chris Zydel’s wonderful post changed my mind. Check it out—she talks about why reframing the whole concept of making mistakes is a very good idea. I love her weed analogy. And her allusion to the doctrine of the Church of Mistakes. I know I’m a member of that congregation.

Chris reminds us how important it is to remember to be kind to yourself when you make mistakes and things don’t turn out the way your judgmental mind hoped they would. It’s also helpful to remember the good that can come out of your mistakes (or the things you think are mistakes). Like learning. New insights.

And sometimes, the Happy Accident.

One of my favorite Winnie-the-Pooh stories (I almost typed “when I was a kid,” then I realized it’s still one of my favorite Pooh stories) is the one about Eeyore’s birthday. Eeyore, as you may remember, is a rather gloomy and depressed donkey. He doesn’t expect much from life, so “not much” is usually what he gets. One year on his birthday, Pooh and Piglet each bring him a birthday present. Pooh’s gift is a jar of honey, which he (being a Bear of Very Little Impulse Control When it Comes to Hunny) unthinkingly eats along the way. Piglet’s gift is a big red balloon, which he falls upon and bursts while running to Eeyore’s place.

Each presents his gift rather shamefacedly, but Eeyore is entranced by the way the burst balloon fits into the pot perfectly. Pooh and Piglet leave him happily dropping the balloon into the honey pot, then pulling it out again, then dropping it in again . . .

Quite by accident, they had given Eeyore the best birthday present ever.

I remember a happy accident of my own. One year during college, I stayed in town for the summer semester. I’d been working hard on my honors thesis and other very cerebral matters of (*cough*) lofty import (*cough*), so I decided to get my hands into some soothing, 100% physical clay. I took a wheel-thrown pottery class and had a blast—so much that I frequently went to the studio after hours to practice on my own.

One day I decided to use the big, heavy kick wheel (where you kick a very heavy round stone attached by a vertical axle to the potter’s wheel, making them rotate together) rather than one of the electric ones (where you step on a pedal to make the wheel spin, and the speed varies with your foot pressure). I’d never used the kick wheel before, so I intended to make a simple bowl.

As I worked the clay, it collapsed too far inward. At first I was upset, but then wondered what else the clay might want to become. It turned (pun absolutely intended) out to be the best mug I ever made, and I still drink out of it today. It’s not perfect—I didn’t know much about making handles, so my mug handle is sort of fragile and irregular-looking.

But because of its beginnings as a proto-bowl, my mug has a very thick bottom. Coupled with the inward-curving sides, it holds heat like no other mug I’ve owned. And there’s nothing like the pleasure of sipping hot tea or coffee from a piece of pottery you’ve thrown, glazed, and fired yourself. It means more to me than any “perfect” commercially produced mug I could buy from a store.

What kinds of happy accidents have you had? I’d love to hear about them!

Perfection has a paralyzing effect, have you noticed? You have this Grand Plan. It could involve starting your own business, losing 50 pounds by the holidays this year, becoming a famous blues guitarist, or possibly something that is so unique, so special, so you that you feel it burning inside you, yearning for expression. Whatever it is, it’s BIG.

In my case, it was writing a novel.

Hardly unique–someone once told me that every other person you know dreams of writing a book, and I’d be surprised if it’s that few. But it’ll do to illustrate what I’m talking about. Since, you know, I’ve never tried to climb Mount Everest or anything.

I somehow learned to read at a very young age, and progressed rapidly from Clifford the Big Red Dog to Brave New World. Which I read when I was about 11 years old because I thought it had a cool cover, completely unaware that I was picking up a classic.

Science fiction and fantasy have always been my genres of choice, and even as a teenager I would sometimes think, “Hey, I could write this stuff!” But in my cocky self-assurance I never actually tried, except for a few false starts which never went beyond three pages. That was okay, because I “knew” that I could do it, and would when I was ready.

I’ve been ready for almost 20 years now. And I’ve tried to write a novel enough times to recognize my youthful hubris for what it was. Writing is damn hard, and writing something so lengthy is damn hard multiplied by 1,000.

When I finally conceded the level of difficulty involved, I was well and truly humbled, and I inwardly prostrated myself at the feet of all novel-writers past and present in abject apology. (Well, at the feet of the good novel-writers, at least. A woman has her pride.) The fire of my writing desire was banked, though not fully extinguished.

Then I discovered NaNoWriMo.

NaNo-huh??? Allow me to explain by way of a very short story.

The difficulty I’ve always had is with constructing a plot. Intriguing characters with rich backstories I can create by the dozen. I can do world-building pretty well, too, thinking through all the what-ifs of a culture I’ve created in my imagination. But to come up with an interesting narrative trajectory for my characters to travel? Nuh-uh. Never could do it in a way that kept me interested, let alone a potential posse of readers.

So one day about four years ago I was trawling the web for books on plot construction and I found one called No Plot? No Problem!Intrigued, I ordered it, only to discover that it wasn’t about plot construction per se. Rather, it described, in author Chris Baty’s hysterically funny prose, this odd-sounding event called National Novel Writing Month. Or NaNoWriMo for short.

This worldwide event happens every November, and you can join and participate through the Internet as well as organize and/or attend local write-ins if you live near other WriMos.

I joined, and wrote my first novel that November.

On day #1 I blocked so hard on the fantasy novel I tried to write that I simply could not move forward. I wasn’t ready to be quite thatimperfect yet. But I still reaaaaally wanted to do NaNo (as we affectionately call it), so on day #2 I switched gears and started a story about, amazingly enough, a woman about my age living in San Francisco, not liking her job, and looking for a career change. I guess it’s true we write what we know.

No matter—I finished the novel. All 50,000+ words of it. (50K is the goal at which you can officially finish and declare yourself a winner.)

If you want to write a book but your inner perfectionist has been keeping you from doing it like mine did for so long, I can’t recommend NaNoWriMo highly enough. You can do it on your own at any time, of course, but the support you get by doing it with everyone else in November makes the wait worthwhile.

What makes the program so effective? It allows you to barrel right past your critical mind. You have to write so much so fast that quality concerns fly out the window—you just don’t have time for them. “I can edit later” becomes your mantra. And the amazing thing is that once you push past your initial resistance, get into the flow, and establish a daily writing routine, you realize it’s completely feasible to write 50,000 words or more in a month if you just keep writing and don’t overthink it.

It’s fun, it’s intense, and it’s probably the best training program for recovering perfectionists I’ve ever found.

Maybe I’ll see you on www.nanowrimo.org this November.

I’m scared and amused at the same time.

Scared because here I am, writing my very first blog post. On my new website about perfectionism. And because I’m a gradually recovering perfectionist, I am—big surprise—afraid that it won’t be perfect. Amused because I’ve developed enough self-awareness to laugh at myself and think, “Sheesh. There I go again.”

So with great anticipation, excitement, and—yes!—definitely some discomfort and uneasiness, I’d like to welcome you to my new blog.

If you’re one of the folks along for the beginning of the journey—hi there, and thanks! For cheering me on, and for walking some of the way with me as I venture out into the wilds of Bloggery.

If you’ve discovered me later on by following a link or someone’s recommendation, or doing a web search—well, I’m ecstatic that you found me, because it means that my past is now talking to your present, which also means my blog and website still exist! So that is (will be? hmm…) very thrilling to me. Welcome!

This should be an exciting journey, because I’m damn well going to make it that way. First of all, I’m leaving my map behind. (Excuse me—brief pause while I wrestle the keyboard away from my Inner Control Freak, who just went into panic mode at that statement and tried to delete it.)

I should probably introduce my Inner Control Freak, who you’ll probably get to know if you hang out here a while. She doesn’t have a name (yet, though I’m not excluding the possibility), but she’s been known to make me print directions from both Mapquest and Expedia when I’m going somewhere new . . . just to be safe and make sure that both sources agree with each other. Or if they don’t, bonus! I can shave three whole minutes off the trip by going one way instead of the other, and that’s three more precious minutes I can spend Being Productive on a Current To-Do Item in my never-ending quest to Get It All Done! (Of course whenever I point out that keying in the addresses, printing, and retrieving both sets of directions takes longer than four minutes, my dear overprotective ICF rolls her eyes and says, “Now you’re just being difficult.”)

So anyway, no maps. And no travel guides or dictionaries, either. I’m going to explore the strange country of Bloggery as I go, learning its language and customs as I travel, rather than wringing the life out of the journey by trying to gain a dry intellectual understanding of the culture before I even set foot across the border.

In fact, instead of a compass, I’m packing my new spontaneometer. That’s right—it’s a nifty little device that will guide me not by my location in reference to some arbitrarily constructed system of coordinates, but by how I feel about what is happening around me. Instead of pointing north, the spontaneometer constantly points toward unstructured, spur-of-the-moment joy. The closer I orient myself to that direction, the happier I should be. Or so the box it came in says. We’ll see.

I would definitely enjoy having some companions on my journey, though.

I’m pretty easygoing and I get along well with most people, so if you’re interested, I’d probably enjoy having you along whoever you are. But what I’d really love is to gather a whole group of people who are struggling with perfectionist tendencies like I am. People who might like some of the by-products (being organized, prepared, respected for your accomplishments, etc.), but who are tired of feeling like they’re never good enough, fast enough, thorough enough, committed enough to excel at everything they “should” do or be as wonderful in every respect as they “should” be. People who, like me, are starting to suspect the validity of all those shoulds. Who are beginning to realize that by believing them, we’re “shoulding” ourselves in the foot, so to speak.

I think we’ll have a lot to talk about, and a lot of experiences to share. I even have some tips and tricks to share with you based on what I’ve learned so far.

So what do you say? Are you up for an adventure? I was careful to stock up before hitting the publish button (you know how we perfectionists are), and I’ve got pith helmets, cargo pants and spontaneometers to go around. If you’d like to join me, grab whatever you need and let’s go!