All I needed was a picture to display on my Facebook and WhatsApp status on my birthday. I told my make-up artist and photographer that I would love a black background portrait of me in a black outfit.
I wanted my eyes to really pop!
Anyway, the featured image for this post is the outcome of that photoshoot. I didn’t like it. I was dissatisfied.
My face is a little close to what I anticipated, the background is black as I imagined but my artist couldn’t get the picture edited without leaving some lines around my hair which makes it look like It was smoothened with fire.
That hair cost me a fortune, yet It appeared really cheap every time I looked at it. A little ‘rough around the edges’ if you ask me. And that overshadowed any good aspect of the portrait in my mind.
Each time we tried to edit this photo, it got worse and looked even more artificial and too photo-shopped. I finally dropped the idea of using it and went on to take new photos entirely.
A few friends saw this picture and liked it. They felt I could use it but not me. It was totally different from what I envisioned.
You see, a few months into my decision to start this craft of writing and blogging, I decided to check out other blogs, especially the ones that resonate with my own idea. But the more i checked, the more i felt inadequate. Everything I read seemed perfectly crafted except mine.
My purpose of reading was to improve myself, but the more I went through and saw some grammatical expressions, the more I felt incompetent.
However, after several trips to other people’s blogs and writeups, I discovered and concluded that we will all write differently!
While some writers will express great and valuable ideas in short compositions, others will prefer to relay a message with many paragraphs and unique vocabularies.
We will execute this craft in our own different and unique ways. The truth is, how much effort we put into life will sometimes determine the results we get, so polishing our writing skills and fine-tuning our style for finesse is worthwhile but we need not lose our authenticity while at it.
As writers, when we devote a lot of our energy to ironing out imperfections and smoothening all rough edges in order to attain a certain standard, we begin to waste our time!. We may end up compiling posts that may never see the light of day.
Trying to write perfectly based on an assumed societal expectation, stifles the creative spirit of the average human being and inhibits us from giving the world our ingenuity. In fact, not being original is deceptive both to oneself and the world.
What you call or tag ‘imperfect’ is good enough for others. If simplicity is your original expression, then don’t complicate issues by trying to make things unnecessarily ambiguous.
Whether you write long or short posts, keep it simple and authentic. And if you have a prowess for arranging voluminous packages with great grammatical structure, please ride on, but keep it real.
Originality trumps all.
NB: Yes! The featured image for this post is placed horizontally. All efforts to place it as a portrait without getting it compressed proved abortive. Dimension issues of course!. I decided to leave it imperfectly beautiful!.
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Just what I needed to motivate me ! Beautiful and truthful piece.
I’m glad you are encouraged Tomi! Thanks for stopping by.💖