Just do it badly
My new book comes out at the beginning of April, and if I didn’t have a wealth of ugly habits, shortcomings, and failures, I wouldn’t be so well qualified to write a book called The Joy of Doing Things Badly. Truly I say unto you, I’d have to destroy a rain forest to commit to paper my multiple, albeit pedestrian, flaws. At times, I have thought that it is a mighty cruel joke that God could bestow on me such a yearning for perfectionism — the loud and resounding voice within that Sue Bender calls “the judge” — alongside so little ability to reach my myriad and lofty goals. When I was a child, I thought “Humpty Dumpty” was just a story, like “Cinderella” or “The Three Little Bears.” I did not know that it was a parable of fear and failure and loss. What this book is about, at the very heart of it, is how, time after time, with no help from all the king’s horses and all the king’s men, you can put yourself back together again.