Let me explain.

We the people have just exited a war zone. With Trump gone, we can now begin the recovery process, and for a little while it is going to be rough transitioning back to a peaceful civilian life after four long years of constant bombardment.

Like I keep saying, Trump’s one true genius was his ability to repeatedly top himself in horribleness every single day of his administration.

And that kind of thing takes a toll on you, the sort of toll that you don’t even consciously feel while the attack is still going because you have long ago forgotten what normal felt like and have retreated into a kind of defensive crouch where the only goal is survival.

Now that there’s peace, though, we are starting to remember what life was like before him, and we can finally feel the difference and therefore really feel just how incredibly fucked up life under Trump was and that is going to be quite traumatic at first.

So I think the next month or so will be pretty rough. Sure, democracy survived the illness. The fever broke, the disease is dead, and better days are on the horizon.

But it will take a while for the aftereffects to fade. The disease is dead but our cells are still soaked in the toxins it created and there’s still a lot of dead bacteria to flush out of our collective bloodstreams.

Not only that, but our nervous systems have been attuned to constant bullshit bombardment for so long that it will take some time before our nerves actually believe the threat has passed.

I’ve already seen this in my liberal American friends. When I say something positive about the current situation, they reflexively reply, “Oh, but the forces he unleashed are still with us and we might never be able to recover from that. “

This is nonsense. Trump is gone, his supporters are thoroughly disgraced, his legislative cronies like Mitch the Bitch are powerless before the wrath of the court of public opinion, Democrats control EVERYTHING, and Trump is going to go on trial and every dirty secret will come out and justice will be served at long last.

So why the negativity? Because people are afraid to hope. Things have been so hopeless for so long that we are not quite ready to believe its truly over yet, and so we convince ourselves that, despite all evidence, things are still awful.

This will pass, of course, as the pattern fades from lack of reinforcement and the wolf persists in not being at the door.

But I bet there are millions of people currently plagued by nightmares where Donald Trump is still the President somehow.

In fact, I think in a very perverse way, we will miss him, like old Londoners getting misty eyed over the Blitz. You can miss anything you got used to, no matter how awful that thing was at the time.

Heck, Trump has dominated the conversation for so long that it will take some time for us to even remember what we used to talk about.

I think it was…. taxes, or something?

…is worth doing badly.

Sounds wrong, doesn’t it? But it’s right, and for us grown up smart kids, it can be a paradigm smashing and highly liberating concept.

So let’s get smashing. It’s clobbering time!

First, let’s deal with the logical issues.

If something is worth doing, then it’s worth doing even if it is done badly. The only question is whether it is done well enough to considered done.

And when you think about it, the very idea of doing something assumes that.

Think of it like grades. Us precocious adults can easily get trapped into thinking that if you don’t get an A, you have failed somehow.

But life, like school, doesn’t work like that. In life, all that is needed is a passing grade.

In the school of life, a D is just as good as an A+.

For instance, say you come upon the victim of a terrible accident and you can see that this person will die if you don’t use some gauze and bandaging from the nearby first aid kit to patch them up pronto. ^[1]

The pre-enlightenment stance would be to freeze up because you don’t know anything about first aid and if you try to bandage the person you know you will do a terrible job.

Well, now they’re dead. Good job.

The enlightened reaction is to do the best bandaging job you can and hope it is good enough. Sure, you might screw up – but you might do a good enough job to save their life long enough for the EMTs to show up, and the person might live.

And that’s way more of a chance than doing nothing would have given them.

This also maps to neurotic concerns about doing things “right”. That’s another phantom of a high achieving childhood. The overweening need to have the “right” answer can completely blind us to a superior “right enough” answer.

So the state “anything worth doing is worth doing badly” is definitely true. I both know and acknowledge this.

Accepting it on an emotional level is another thing entirely. That’s the main reason I decided to write about this tonight : to help it sink in.

Thing is, I have never thought of myself as a perfectionist. In fact, I have always seen the dangers inherent in perfectionism.

But then again, it’s easy to eschew perfectionism when high performance comes easily and naturally to me. When you can get 90 percent without trying, why try harder?

I am constitutionally incapable of trying harder than I need to. It’s a character flaw.

Anyhow, despite my non-perfectionism, this “worth doing badly” thing hit me like an atom bomb when I first read it months ago.

My mind immediately rejected it HARD. That can’t possibly be right. After all, it sounds so very wrong.

But then I read the explanation in the article and it clicked. It’s totally true, for all the reasons listed above.

The particular application of this principle that sparked this discussion was a discussion with my therapist about how I make things but never put them anywhere they might get noticed and appreciated.

And I got thinking that I should submit stuff places. But of course, before I do that, I would have to clean said stuff up and make it presentable and work to make it as good as I can, right?

Which means it will never ever happen. Gumption trap. Self-checkmate.

Anything that makes something longer and more complicated is instantly rejected by depression. It says “No way can you sustain motivation through that palaver. “

But is that step really necessary? After all, sending out my usual half-baked creations is better than sending out nothing at all.

I mean, what the hell. I’ve been getting away with submitting first drafts for my whole life. Why stop now?

For all I know, getting published or noticed or promoted or whatever

So what the hell. From now on, I will keep going even if all I can manage to do is my usual sloppy, half-assed job of things.

It’s worked for me so far!

More after the break.

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Later that day

This keyboard is developing issues. The spacebar takes more force to operate each day. And sometimes random keypresses occur.

Oh well, time to either pop all the keys out so I can give the inside of the keyboard a deep and thorough cleaning, or buy a new one.

Guess which one is more likely to happen.

Been checking out potential upgrades for this here compubox of mine. Going to be using this article from Tom’s Hardware as a guide.

Looks like a new GPU will cost me $300-$500. Oy. Still don’t know which one to get yet but at least I have narrowed it down a tad.

Still not sure I want to pay all that, though. There’s tons of games out there that this bucket of bolts can still play. Technically, I don’t “need” to upgrade.

On the other hand, I got $2000 sitting on my card awaiting use, and considering that video games are what I do all day, enhancing that experience is a sensible way to invest that money.

Boy, that’s a lot of money, though.

After the GPU would come a new monitor. Something big and high rest to make things all purty and possibly easier on the eyes.

In fact, there are monitors specifically designed to minimize eye strain now.

Bet those are easy on the eyes.

I suppose part of why I am hesitating is that investing the money in my video gaming experience seems kind of like giving in.

Like I am officially declaring that depression wins and this is all I can expect of life.

Then again, it’s not like I could otherwise use the money to move myself forward.

Not unless they sell mental health wholesale these days.

So I dunno. Guess I will just keep thinking about it.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.