From Binary to Destiny
Journaling About Resilience and Perfectionism with a creative pic of the Tower of Pisa.
I don’t know what to write or say. I would like the words to just spill out for the next 30 to 40 minutes. This is my perfectionism talking.
I know exactly what I want to write and say. I want it so badly, it feels like I am screaming inside. My pen flows so fast across the page that I already know I will struggle to read it later.
Journaling is something I started a few years ago. An on and off love, mostly off. So off that we never even made it to “Meet my parents.” That was my relationship with journaling until last year. Last year, we met for a coffee. I said, “I need to write you, is it okay?” And something clicked. Ink everywhere. Journaling became my partner in understanding myself.
I did not change, not yet, but through journaling, I was able to write down my thoughts and challenge them. I was the teacher pointing at emotions, feelings and mental states, calling them out and writing their names. “Please you, with red hair, stand up, say your name and why you are here!” Then I wrote.
But as I began naming emotions, I realised something deeper. A loud, oppressed voice inside me was still holding back. Why was it there? I needed to challenge that.
Still something like searching “Improve my calligraphy”, “write like a pro” was holding me back. My perfectionism.
My perfectionism was saying that I had to write well, precisely with tidy and neat organisation, no room for mistakes. Meanwhile, my thoughts disappeared. There was a huge lag between thinking and execution. It felt like standing in the middle of a busy street, juggling groceries, while change slipped through a hole in my pocket and clinked onto the concrete. No zebra crossing, of course. Because doing everything all at once as a newbie it’s the right choice. Perfectionism check. Then I looked up and I understood something. Gods light beam on me : “journaling is only for my eyes”. And like from the Bible a voice told me “Walk Lazzaro! Walk!” As I moved away from the middle of the street I was keep wondering where this perfectionism comes from?
But where the perfectionism was coming from? Maybe when I said “ I want to go to art school” and I was forced to study “Electrotechnics and Automations”? I remember the amount fo mathematics, physics and logic thinking. Maybe just after starting my career as plumber. Maybe when I move to work in an office on blueprints and quotations for only 11 years. Did I forget to say I was selling toilets meanwhile? (This makes me laugh all the time). The challenges during those years come constantly from my workplace and from solving problems. At the time, everything felt binary, iteral ones and zeroes. Even my thinking was: “I am what I am’ in binary”.
This is what looks like thinking that sentence in binary:
01001001 00100111 01101101 00100000 01110111 01101000 01100001 01110100 00100000 01001001 00100000 01100001 01101101
(Honestly I had to ask to chatGPT that transformed the sentence in ASCII and then in binary! After 20 years I would just spent too much time doing that).
From Binary to Destiny: Want to Make That Leap?
Don’t worry, I’ll keep this simple. Or at least I’ll try. Grab some snacks.
How did I change my career? I had to break free from other people’s expectations of what I was “supposed” to do for the rest of my life. The only way was to get loose, like wobbling on a training bike for the first time. My training bike was photography. It was my only alternative, my shiny thing, the one passion that gave me a sense of direction.
Yes, it’s true, I also tried to start a football career in my 30s. (Spoiler: it didn’t work, but I did end up with some fantastic shoes.) I have a tendency to spiral into singular commitments.
“If I’m not doing this now, it will only get harder in my 40s,” I kept telling myself. I HAD TO LEARN PHOTOGRAPHY FAST. That was the plan. A big plan. The kind of plan adults create to make life easier—by breaking it into steps:
• Start with my training bike;
• Get a normal bike;
• Add a light to the bike so I could stay out later with my friends;
• Get a scooter to visit “the girl” in the next village;
• Finally, get a car.
And for the special bonus:
• GET A TANK.
Yes, I was that kid. When adults asked, “What do you want to do when you grow up?” I’d look up with awe and confidently reply, “The tank.” A kid with big dreams and slightly disconnected ideas, looking back, that’s how I’d describe myself.
At that point, photography became my destiny. My shiny little thing. Like the wood for a wheelwright, it was the material I needed to shape my craft. But that’s another story.
For me, managing and pleasing others’ insecurities has always been painstakingly difficult. In fact I chose to use painstakingly because this is one of the words that I learned reading English fiction. People would say “look no one uses that word and I don’t even know what does it mean!”. This is exactly what I mean, not painstakingly, but how people project their insecurities onto you, making you feel wrong when you’re not. I learned that in my case insecurity drives shame and perfectionism, as Berne’ Brown says, flourish from shame.
Resilience always being with me and it is what is driving me from binary to destiny.
Now it’s time for bed.
Good morning.
Mattia