It’s T-1 days before Internet goes up in smoke. Mabel’s Labels says all I have for my swan song post is 300 words.

The mere mention of such a tight word count unleashes my perfectionist demons, which I’ve tried so very hard to suppress all these years. 300 words is all I get to write one last, uber-meaningful post to the world? Really?

Egads, what if I’m not pithy enough? I wish I had Nabakov’s vocabulary. Wonderfully descriptive words, like pearlescent, sprung effortlessly from his pen…and English wasn’t even his first language! Shoot at this point, I’d settle for Heather Armstrong’s skills. That woman can dash off a few words with earth-shattering importance in a way that gets people rolling in the aisles. Meanwhile I sit here at my kitchen table circling the perfectionist drain. Write a word. Delete. Try a sentence. No better. Delete. Stop, get coffee. Hear kids playing in the background and wonder – should I just give up and go play with them? At least there’s honor in that. I mean, who am I kidding? What I write will never be good enough.

Wait a minute. Good enough for who, exactly?

Silence.

The perfectionist police?

Silence.

I can feel the wall crumbling, the gears starting to engage.

What if even just one reader out there related to my blathering? What if it made her stop for a moment to observe her own perfectionist monologue…? What if it reminded her of how much she could accomplish if she bravely, imperfectly just did something?

And what if that something, no matter how small, made the world an even slightly better place?

Then this post, no matter how imperfect, will have mattered.

In that spirit – I’m pressing “Publish” and hoping for the best.