Getting this blog up and running has been quite the process. It’s now been TWO WHOLE YEARS that I’ve been toying with the idea, taking 5 steps forward just to take 3 more back. But at last, we are here! I went from conceptualizing things as this wee babe (I had just come out as nonbinary): 

To fully embarking on this blogging journey as the unapologetically queer little beast that I am:

Needless to say, when I do it up the way I like best, I turn many more heads than that day I met an unwilling Mennonite family in an Ohio pitstop bathroom two years ago.

Anyway, I named this article “Perfectly Imperfect” because I’ve recently been in a coaching program that is teaching me how important that pseudo-oxymoron really is for us to understand. When we keep moving the goal posts farther down the field to obtain “perfection” (in quotes, because it generally doesn’t exist), we keep ourselves from living in the moment and appreciating what is. The only perfection that is obtainable is in perceiving the human experience as whole and purposeful, flaws and all.

I am publishing this blog before I’ve considered myself ready to do so. Not all the menu tabs have content yet, and I have an overwhelming amount of unfinished posts in my Google docs. But, I have been sitting on things for too long. Letting go of the outcome and living in the moment is allowing me to just say

fuck it.

It’s time. It’s time to actively invest in creating a world where we are allowed to be perfectly imperfect, because to be perfectly imperfect is to be human. I may be queer, neurodivergent, and disabled, but the world is hard even on the neurotypical, cisgendered, abled folk. We convince ourselves that it’s healthy to conform to a system that serves a select few in power (read: older rich white men), and I would even bet that those in power aren’t truly fulfilled and happy, save for the sadistic plenty. (I say sadistic, because I don’t understand how most rich people can see all the injustices in the world and not want to be part of the solution.) The system that we live in dehumanizes us on the daily, and I’m tired of it. I’m tired of seeing injustice after injustice, of people not being able to live fully-actualized lives, and worse, not being able to live free of fear and harm.

Bottom line, and I’ll dig more into this “oxymoron” later on, is that I have been holding myself back for at least a year and half now because I was afraid of not having everything “perfect.” I’ve been afraid of others’ judgement, and afraid of my own self-perception should I fail expectations. But now the only expectations I have for myself are to live my truth and speak up for others.

That’s it.

Oh, and to stay perfectly imperfect.