Perfectionism and How Magazines are Made

By Linda Kelly, MSW, RSW

“Does this picture work?” 
“How about this one?”
“Should the logo be there or…”
“Wait, if the logo isn’t there it could be shared and then people won’t know who made it.”
“It looks off. Does it look off?”
 
So goes the conversation in our cozy, warmly lit office that does not yet have the white desks and plants that would have come in handy for staging our own photos. Realistically, white desks would be full of pen marks in no time, right?
 
All of these minor details add up to the oddest conversations, largely interrupted by me with unrelated topics as Piper ardently strives to make this magazine so lovely, so perfect, and so recognizable that it will change the world. 
 
She fixes a photo. I condense sentences. 
She asks me to write about a topic of interest. I send her memes until I am suddenly struck (STRUCK!) by motivation and the words flow out effortlessly. 
 
Do the details matter? Of course! Because every colour or line or word is what will draw people in. And if we want to make mental health understandable and normal, if we want to validate the lived experiences of others while offering help and advice, it all matters. 
 
When we thought about trying to put together a magazine, it was just a whim. We wanted to conserve all of the efforts we had put into writing articles for the public. It was a way of wrapping all of them up in a pretty package every few months so that people could enjoy them indefinitely. 
 
And then it became a thing. 

We didn’t really know what to make of it at first. It looked…real. Professional, even. 
 
It’s an incredible, indescribable feeling to realize that there’s value in something that came from you and the combined efforts of the people around you who want the same things. It’s intimidating to consider the possibility of failure and rejection. Most would rather not try than risk failure.
 
But we had to get past the perfectionism to get this far, otherwise we’d tear ourselves down before anyone else had a chance to do it. 
 
So here we are, picking away at this project in this overcrowded office, and perfecting it as much as we can before we take the plunge and put it out for the world to see. 
 
Sometimes It seems impossible that anything will ever really matter, that nothing you can do will matter if it’s not perfect. And as they say, “Perfect is the enemy of good.” If we wait for every detail and every effort to be perfect, we remain paralyzed and produce nothing at all. 
 
To take the leap and make mistakes means that we get the opportunity to learn and grow. It takes effort and fear and vulnerability to try to do something big. So here we go. 
 
What’s so impossible about making the world a better place, anyway?