Milestones

This is my 100th blog.

I first called my blog site Pursuit of Perfection.
Actually, I called it Persuit of Perfection.
The irony right? It took me a while to figure out how to change the domain to fix that unfortunate typo.

Four years ago, I had no perfectly laid plans for this blog site. I never knew anything about blogging, or WordPress but I had a yearning to write.
I needed a place to allow my feelings and emotions to become thoughts and my thoughts to become words.
A place where those words could fall out of my head and collect onto a page.
A place where I could give those words an opportunity to organise themselves into a story. A beginning, a middle and an end.
A place where I could let it out and let it go – thoughts, feelings, fears, ideas, setbacks, shortcomings, dramas and traumas – and replace it with learnings, growth and gratitude.

Years ago, before I even knew what a blog was, when I tried writing in my notebooks (plural), I had to start a new notebook with every entry because it was so long between writing that I had a different pen or a different handwriting style or a different house. It left me with numerous attempts at beginnings. No middles. And definitely no ends.

10th March 2006,

Dear diary, Today is the start of my new journal. A place where I will write my thoughts and work through my feelings.

6th May 2007

Dear Diary, It’s been a while, I was busy thinking about starting but then I got distracted and then well… wait what was I saying?

30 June 2008

Dear Diary, Today I went for a run, ate salmon on rye bread and had a long phone call with my mom.

2 Jan 2009

Dear Diary, Today is the start of my new journey…

Pursuit of Perfection was an idea,  or perhaps rather a challenge,  to live out my journey of trying to undo the grip that perfectionism had over me through action. Doing something. Being okay to not be good at something. Being okay even to fail. (According to my own illogical, unattainable expectations)

This was my place to just start. Just try. Just be.

We all have to start somewhere and so here is my first leap into the world of blogging. This blog serves to document my flawed, yet fearless journey of trying to do the the infamous “juggle” of work, home, motherhood, social and self.

pursuitofperfection.website

And so I dived in with my first blog The joyous occasion of putting up the fng Christmas tree.
In the beginning most of my blogs were anecdotal accounts of me trying to get through a day of parenting like Mission Impossible or one of those times where only looking on it now is it funny but at the time? Yoh… Road Trippin Flippin Rage

As time passed, as I read more, went to therapy, sat with myself, and made small tiny steps towards self love, I gave myself permission and allowed myself compassion to fail, and it led to big ass life changing decisions.

My writing started becoming a lot more personal, reflective, and raw. I wrote Messy gorgeous progress in Dec 2019. Below is an excerpt.

And, like I am busy reading now with Brené Brown, as ugly and messy as the middle part is, it is necessary, vital and cannot be skipped.
I am grateful for the middle part. I have set up camp in that middle part. Yes it’s hard AF. But it also means progress. If I was comfortable right now, it would mean zero change, zero progress, and zero gorgeousness waiting at the other end. I have reached that point of no return where you can’t go back, but going forward is messy, challenging and difficult.

Perfectly Sorted Blog Post – Messy gorgeous progress

When the timing is right, the words flow and tend to arrange themselves on the page or screen in front of me. When I try too hard to control the process, it stagnates and becomes cumbersome. I usually find it best to just write in one go, and not to spend too much time going over it, otherwise my perfectionism turns up, turns into procrastination and in turn, nothing comes of it.

Some of my favourite pieces of writing (which were hard for me emotionally to write, and even harder to hit publish, but ultimate set me free and allowed the opportunity to grow) were; Breaking Point about my struggles with my son, Jump, Fall, Land in which I reflected on my divorce, and the Hitting the Wall series, which was a very raw, real account of my descent to my version of rock bottom, burnt out and broken.

A milestone is a notable event that causes some change to occur or that marks a specific point in the development of a person or project.

Is zero to one hundred blog posts over four years good? Who the hell knows? But what I do know is this. If I had waited for the perfect time, the perfect blog website, planned out the content perfectly, and learnt everything there is to know about blogging and WordPress and writing, I doubt I would have published anything at all. So hell yeah… this definitely marks a specific point my personal development journey.