There should be a twelve-step programme for perfectionism.

It wouldn’t be all that popular though, because a perfectionist hits rock bottom, looks around, and thinks “I can do better.”

Then, he gets the shovel.

One of my grade-school teachers (the one who was thrown out of the Marines for being too mean) tried to cure me of that, once. She kept me after school to work on a project. No, not after that school day. After the school year.  

I sat and glued crepe paper to an American flag for… well, I’m pretty sure it was as long as she intended to be there. By the time I was finished with it, I had a patriotic monstrosity weighing in at ten or fifteen pounds, and assurances from one of the older kids that he still had his.

By the end of the day,  I’d pretty much learned that the Marine Corps does not care about the quality of crepe paper flags, and that the whole process was more or less intended to waste my time. 

But the lesson about perfectionism? Well, that didn’t take.

Maybe that has to do with all the other places where I was being patted on the head for that very same perfectionism.

There’s a point at  which you just have to be done, and that’s probably my missing puzzle piece. I miss that point coming and going, and then, I wind up rearranging things.

So, how do you tell when things are “done enough?”