Good [Enough] Riddance

Lost: Inspiration. If found, please return to Allison. Reward: Really entertaining, creative, thoughtful essays for years to come.

In order for you to understand this, you need to know the following:

I used to wear eye makeup all the time. In fact, eye makeup may have been a part of me. As my friends will attest, I rarely left the house without my fully painted, multi-layer eyeliner/mascara combo, or at least some of yesterday’s still smeared raccoon-like around their rims. (I once wrote a creative essay about the meaning of meticulously applying eyeliner and mascara every day, which I still considerably enjoy reading.)

Now, it is rare that I wear any. Why? Because going without is good enough. I wake up in the morning, and I think about what I must do that day. Mostly, it will be nothing extraordinary, but that’s not necessarily the problem. I have come to a point where I don’t even feel capable of creating or happening upon an extraordinary situation in which I would connect with a person of viable romantic interest. The aforementioned creative essay talked about using eyes to make people think about me when they saw me, even if for a brief moment on the street. While I certainly consider made-up eyes a greater physical advantage than my naked ones, I am not interested in employing them here and now, based on my surroundings (plus, I’ve heard actively questing for a boyfriend doesn’t work). I do, however, miss the artistic aspect of the morning ritual. So, looking like myself, but not (in my opinion) my best self, is good enough.

Good enough. Maybe ‘good enough’ is all right when applied to certain things, like my eye makeup. Homework for high school physics class, the subject I knew 100 percent that I would never use, also comes to mind. Note that I’m not talking about failing or producing crap.[1]

When I say ‘good enough,’ that is what I mean — it gets the job done. In the case of my homework, the ‘good enough’ came from me, not my parents or my teachers who constantly pushed me to be better. But what I have now realized, four sentences later, is that my physics work could have affected others. It could have reflected on my teacher or my parents; not only that, they could have felt discouraged knowing they pushed me to be better, and I just settled. So maybe ‘good enough’ really is not okay, but especially when it comes to doing things you care about.

‘Good enough’ should be, well, good enough, right? Frankly, it seems to me that ‘good enough’ discourages improvement. It doesn’t have movement. It sounds stagnant. It sounds like the language of settling, which it is. You will no doubt feel shitty about the end result of that task or project if you really adhere to the ‘good enough’ mantra. The engineers and mechanics who built the next airplane I fly in better not have settled for ‘good enough.’

When it comes to things you care about doing (if you haven’t noticed, I’m trying to involve you in this plight. Is it working?), you don’t want to settle, do you? You want to resist that urge when ‘good enough’ is upon you. More importantly, you want to resist the urge to submit when ‘good enough’ gets bigger and more influential (Kuehl). You want to beat ‘good enough,’ and care. What you don’t want to do is become so lax that your ability to care slips away. You want to improve so that you keep caring, and you ideally want to be the best if that’s ever possible.

Writing is something I care about. Writing is my job, and writing is my hobby. Writing is something I want to get better at. Now, enter, ‘good enough.’

‘Good enough’ has infiltrated my lifestyle, and it stole my writing inspiration and sent it into hiding. (It also stole my desire to wear eye makeup.) Really, I haven’t written anything worth anything since I started getting regular, prolonged exposure to ‘good enough.’ And since we all are ever-changing products of our lifestyles, it must be the case that ‘good enough’ is to blame for my predicament.

Where did ‘good enough’ come from? For small things, it can start inside us. But for me, ‘good enough’ is presented as a general philosophy for my main daily activities. (To avoid oversimplifying: ‘Good enough,’ in this case is actually supposed to mean ‘Do the best you can with the time and resources you’ve got.’)

‘Good enough’ has been in my life before now (remember physics?), but never with this prominence. My parents, every teacher I’ve had, previous employers — all pushed me pretty hard to do better, even on small things or things that didn’t seem particularly important. ‘Good enough’ usually came from myself, and there were plenty of outside forces to overcome it. Now it’s coming from the outside, too, and that can be harder to beat down.

Flash forward: I am sitting, once again, in the warm and cozy circus tent that is Jenn’s Java. I am happily curled up on a cushy leather couch, mug in hand, racks of bright, handmade scarves and blankets in the background. A nest-like formation of fluffy kittens surrounds me. Ahh, comfort. I am writing. Words are flowing. My tea stays hot. All is right in the world.

Flash back: How do I get to the previous paragraph? Obsessive positive-thinking gurus would tell me to visualize what I want, and it will come to me. HELLO! That is what I have been doing with my inspiration for the past two months! How long do I have to wait?! Plus, I feel stupid doing it and it really doesn’t make any sense – close my eyes and think it, and it will happen? What, may I ask, occurs in between those two steps, unbeknownst to me, to connect all the dots? There must be a logical cause and effect. I must think harder.

Inspiration often is portrayed as an “Ah ha!” derived from a solitary occurrence – someone tells a touching story on the nightly TV news that makes you want to go out and volunteer, or you see a something curious on your walk through the neighborhood. Some historical figures have had muses who they claimed provided sparks of inspiration, and in turn they became very successful people.

I, too, have thought I felt the spark of inspiration. Most recently, it was seeing the movie The Blind Side, the story of NFL football player Michael Oher and how he was homeless and then taken in by a loving family and helped into success. Love those inspirational sports movies, and this one was definitely a crier. I thought maybe Michael Oher would inspire me to write something about selflessness – something meaningful and reflective that would change the way people thought or acted. Unfortunately, he did not. While his story was powerful, it was so far from my experiences that I couldn’t connect with it to write something meaningful, or even entertaining (Kuehl).

Sometimes, I suppose, I have felt a connection to a movie or other work of art, but I’ll argue this isn’t consistent enough to become a constant inspiration. I’ve written some creative pieces that I liked quite a bit that were “inspired” by what I thought were certain moments. But looking back, those creative essays have been a product of my lifestyle, and thusly the people, places and ideas that shaped that lifestyle (whatever type of lifestyle it was at the time). My essay about the time I was a juror and the final verdict, to this day, hangs heavy on my heart: Not just “inspired” by being on the jury, but by the sense of sympathy and humanity I acquired. My essay about the eye makeup: Not derived from an “Ah ha!” moment while applying my eye makeup one morning, but from the ideas and habits I had formed by doing it as a routine. My essay about men enjoying the sight of two women kissing: Not the result of a solitary moment, but of a cultural practice that seemed to surround me during my college years.

Inspiration is derived from elements of lifestyle. ‘Good enough’ is a significant element of my lifestyle. This is a dilemma, but as luck would have it I recently received a package that could serve as a coping mechanism. Inside this package, from a person I consider a creative influence, were written two messages. One was, “The world cannot make you mediocre, for you alone determine the quality you strive for. Dare to be great, no matter how terrifying the journey” (Volpe). The second was, “Sometimes you just have to tell the world to fuck off” (Volpe).

I am more inclined to heed a snide bit of encouragement than a sincere, P.C. sentiment, but the source of the words can really make or break the deal. In this case, I thought about the first statement and felt bad — like I’m weak or submissive — for letting my less-than-ideal situation continue to mold me. But I decided to buck up a little, and it started to make a lot of sense.

Just as I care about being better than ‘good enough,’ so too must I consciously care about inspiration itself in order to acquire it, even if it is as much as terrifying to do so. Me. I have to do it. I have to create my own destiny, as they say. (Before this uplifting revelation makes you sick, think about clichés —phrases used so often that they’ve lost their punch. But, they’re used often. So they must mean something relative to everyday life — quite a lot, in fact.)

I feel like I just discovered some weird, cyclical, chicken-and-egg thing that I really can’t define. Stay with me. I might be on the verge of something.

I thought I needed inspiration to write this essay. What I really needed was to work on this essay to bring back my inspiration. Things like The Proofread are what I really care about; as I failed at constructing essay after essay, I kept coming back because I thought it was important and worthy to do better than ‘good enough’ (or worse, not do it at all). I’m feeling more confident by the word that I can find the part of me that, when my lifestyle and surroundings were a bit different, cared a lot about the job that I now do. It is my hope that my inspiration to keep caring can lead me to be overcome being ‘good enough.’ True, it might be safer to be ‘good enough’ of your own accord if everyone around you is pushing you to be better — they might just save you from yourself. But when ‘good enough’ constantly surrounds you and permeates your thoughts and actions, it is a detriment to let more things fall to ‘good enough.’ For me and for everyone: The desire to overcome ‘good enough’ must inspire you to action, and the desire to be inspired must make you care to be better than ‘good enough.’

Perhaps this essay was not terribly riveting, but dear sweet lord, I hope it was better than ‘good enough.’

Eh. Really, this essay wasn’t for you at all. It was for me. Sorry. You can feel free to consult it in the future, should you need to. But by allowing this one essay to be for me, you’re allowing me to write another 23 all for you.

Thanks. Time to go paint on my eyeliner.

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[1] I’d have to check my records, but I’m fairly certain I ended up with A’s in Physics. When I decided the answer I got was ‘good enough,’ it was usually 1 a.m. and I was about ready to throw my book at the wall.

Works Cited

Kuehl, Matt. E-mails to the author. 4 Dec. 2009, 6 Dec. 2009.

Volpe, Angelo. Quotes mailed to the author. 28 Nov. 2009.