The Ideal, the Real, and The Syncopated Times

From the age of at least five or six I've been tormented by what may pass in a dim light for perfectionism. I would toil away at making something only to tear it down again when its excellence wasn't sublime enough. In the first grade I ruined a rather good painting of a dinosaur when its execution started to drift from I perceived to be my best; in my last year of high school I started sixty-four drafts of a book report only to give the whole thing up and take a brave F. The road of my life is paved with unfinished masterpieces. Among completed works, I have two novels that, with a little polishing (and some heavy editing), might be considered pretty good. There is no need to hide my light under a bushel when I can keep it in a desk drawer. Owing to this manifest lifelong (non) achievement, most of the people I know can't fathom that I'm publishing this paper every month. In their mind's-eye view, they see me lolling and scratching and eating potato chips. They can't imagine me keeping busy with anything but a remote. My colleagues were dubious (one still is) and even the man who sold me the paper didn't think I could do it. Vestiges of my crippling idealism still slow me down, though I can no longer afford the