There is this thing in toxic positivity discussions that is called “curated imperfection”. It’s the way people show themselves to be “relatable” by showing their flaws, but of course these flaws are very carefully selected and chosen. It’s seen a lot among like business gurus, or motivational speakers, but you could see it pretty much everywhere. This is an issue because it means that people who are not able to curate this side of themselves, they end up judging themselves even harder. People who can’t choose to be imperfect in the way that casual messy buns in Instagram end up judging themselves as if their randomly pulled up hair is the same as that stylized meticulous hairstyle made to seem carefree. These people have uncurated imperfection.
This is the kind of thing that can really get our anxieties going when it comes to things like start of the year goals or similar things. It can activate our fatalist sides where we decide if something didn’t go perfectly it needs to be thrown out. We did not mess up in an aesthetically pleasing way so we have to destroy everything. It’s like we are building a ladder and we decide that because this one rung is not straight we need to get rid of the rest of it and start over.
There must be people who read this and quickly say “No, you don’t have to start over” but you have to consider two things: A- I am sure some of these people are the “Do as I say not as I do” kind of people and hey I am one; B- You are thinking the people who have these thoughts are working with the same set of spoons than you. Either way, telling people that they should just ignore those things, it’s not that simple. Again, it’s uncurated imperfection. These people didn’t chose how to rip their jeans so they look super cute, the jeans ripped on their own. It’s the whole impostor syndrome thing but like deeply ingrained. It might even be part of why that impostor feeling is there.
After the trip of a year that was 2020, uncurated imperfection can come in and say that it was not the fault of the world being on literal fire at times that you didn’t do the things. Like some random character of a Jane Austen novel, it will blame you for not being more accomplished, before rattling out how the other people managed. And this is the energy I am going to try to not bring in to the new year. I am not setting any real goals here. I am not going to pretend like I am not one of those people with uncurated imperfection. What I am going to do is embrace that and with the lessons of 2020 and how things can go completely off the planned rails, I am going to allow myself to be comfortable in that. So here is to another new year, and the beauty of imperfection.