The African Geek Girl

Like many recovering perfectionists, I struggle to ‘enjoy the process ‘. Whenever I think about doing something, my mind jumps immediately to the ideal result. Then it begins to backfill the most efficient and effective steps to get to that result.

‘But, what’s wrong with having goals and wanting to do things well?’ I hear you, my imaginary audience, wail. Please, friends, allow me to meander to the point.

Most of life is spent in between.

In between paydays and vacays, in between achieving this as a means to get to that. Little steps, big steps, milestones and  improvements. You start, you strive, you finish. You start something new so you can have more to do. And that can be a beautiful thing – if you know how to enjoy the journey. Now, you see my trouble…

For the perfectionist, the joy is in the achievement. The giddiness of a beginning is driven by the borrowed glory of the end. Everything in between becomes a burden. The journey, a chore.

If all the world is a stage, and you only enjoy the performance and the applause – you’re going to end up miserable during the 95% of the time spent grinding and growing in between curtain calls.

So, I’ve been working to develop a better rapport with the process. Teaching myself to enjoy the in between.

My unlikely helper came straight from Mother Nature.

If you’ve seen me anywhere else online recently you probably know about my misadventures with gardening. One of the great things about the soil is that it teaches you the lessons you need, not just the ones you want. To date, the only plant I’ve managed to ‘grow’ to maturity, grew itself from a broken pot that I was too dejected to clean up.

Yet, almost every day for weeks now, I have been able to pick a few cherry tomatoes to snack on. It’s not enough to make an artisanal pasta sauce – most days I get one handful at most. It’s the kind of tiny win that the perfectionist in me hates almost more than having no wins at all.

It’s exactly the kind of tiny win I’m learning to pause and savour.

Because, with just a tilt of the head, I have learnt to see my rogue tomato plant in a different light. I planted her, tended to her and honestly almost killed her with panicked overwatering. My inner perfectionist had been brimming with the anticipated glory of a bountiful, Insta-worthy harvest. Cucumber, okra, cherry tomatoes, oh my!

Then one day, my carefully curated pots became a tree felling casualty and the perfectionist in me simply gave up. She didn’t even pick up her metaphorical ball before going home. Because for her, there is no real value in the process. Only results matter, and there would be no results because the plants were dying in the red clay dirt. Or so I thought.

Harvesting Handfuls of Happiness.

One plant refused to go gently into that good night. Through vicious subtropical storms and scorching summer days, she took root in what remained of her potted soil, and without my overbearing hand fussing (and overwatering) everyday, she started bearing fruit. The perfectionist in me was angry, but something else in me was intrigued.

From one perspective – I failed. Of all the pots and all the plants and all the plans I had, not a single one worked out the way it was supposed to. But with just a tilt of the head, I have been able to see it another way.

Every morning I get to wake up and fill my hand with freshly ripened produce that grew from soil I prepared. Produce from a plant that wasn’t there 6 months and now dominates the front yard like it was always meant to be there.

It’s not much from one perspective. It’s a kind of abundance from another. And every morning I’ve found myself getting more and more excited about these little handfuls of rebellion I get to harvest.

As for the perfectionist in me? Sometimes, when I find an almost over-ripe tomato hidden under lush green leaves, when I examine its bright red, sun kissed skin splitting at the seams… I think I feel her sigh, suppress a smile and say “now, isn’t that almost perfect?”