F*ck perfect

Make something, do something, feel something--no matter how it looks.

A mountain of water and sky images I cut into strips with no attention to uniformity and no plan for what they might become. (Image: B.G. Merkle ©2025)

When you read this note, I’ll be somewhere off-grid with no access to cell service or wifi. I will be in the midst of taking a giant leap towards a creative project I’ve been working on and then sidelining off and on for over 20 years.

I don’t know what will come of this immediate moment of focus. I do know that if I want this project to see the light of day, one week’s dedication to it will be only the next beginning. It will probably take me years more of false starts, reworkings, walking away and returning to it, just to complete a full version of it. Then there will be all the work of trying to actually get it out into the world. Let’s just say, it’s not something I’ll launch on my own.

In essence, I have been thinking about the reality that this time for creative focus is coming soon. I have been reckoning with the fact that it’s really about me setting out on another long creative journey where most of the work will feel hard and imperfect.

A collage that will never be on a greeting card or hung on a wall…and that’s delightful! (Image: B.G. Merkle © 2025)

So I went back into my archives and piles of sketches and journals, looking for other work that has felt difficult, didn’t turn out how I intended, and yet…

I LOVED making these things, while I was doing it. It did not matter in that moment if it wasn’t perfect. Because, because what was perfect was that I was connecting my imagination, my responses to the world, and my sense of connection with other people, beings, and this planet. It does not matter now that it wasn’t perfect, because it exists and reminds me of those connections, those vital responses. It reminds me of the yes. we. can. that gives meaning to me. (And, I hope, to you.)

So, fuck perfection. Give in to the intrinsically human impulse to create, to imagine what can be, to notice what is good about what we have and how we make it together.

Scribble something. Splash some color. Glue some stuff together.

Maybe that stuff will eventually still go in the recycling bin.

Maybe that stuff will stitch your life a smidge closer to someone else.

Fuck perfection—let’s make a beautiful mess together!

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P.S. You still have time to get 30% off of Teaching and Mentoring Writers in the Sciences! Just use the code UCPNEW. This is a labor of love I co-wrote with Stephen Heard to help folks in the sciences connect with the 50+ years’ of research on how to effectively teach writing. It comes out from University of Chicago Press on November 18th!