SuusVooijs

Author: SuusVooijs

  • Disposability

    “Can you fix these slippers?” I hold up my pair of clearly worn loved slippers. The soles hanging on for dear life.

    He puts his glasses on his nose and takes them from my hands. The silence while he inspects is awkward, so I rush to fill it. ”I tried to glue them myself once, but it wasn’t good enough”.

    “What glue you use?” Prying the soles even farther off.

    “Eh, fabric glue”

    “When did you wear them last?”

    “Last winter, so at least half a year ago” I lie. It was way longer. They kept breaking on me and my weak glue couldn’t hold them together.

    He put’s them down on the counter. “I can fix, but you have to decide if it’s worth it for you.”

    “It is” I say before hearing his price. It can’t be more than what a new pair would cost.

    “It will be €35” He looks at me trying to figure out my response.

    Too be fair, €35 was more than I expected. And yes, I could discard these and get a cheaper pair somewhere. But that is not the point. The point is: I like these slippers. Apart from the soles, they’re still in good shape. And that I don’t want to throw away something when it can be repaired.

    It’s something I’m becoming more and more mindfull of. Going for quality and fixability from the start. In a society that’s thriving on disposabilty these days, is becoming increasingly hard. And you might even get judged for it by your cobbler, who’s actual job it is to fix things… As if only expensive items are worth being fixed. Fixing my seemingly unimportant slippers felt like a rebellion against consumer culture. Not replacing an item when it first breaks makes you a weirdo.

    Ofcourse it would’ve been easier to trash my slippers and buy a new pair online. Get them deliverd to my doorstep and be done with it. But again, buying something new isn’t the point here.

    Repairing is.

    Supporting a local business is.

    Caring for what you own is.

    I’m not saying that you should never trash anything ever again and only fixing what you have. But if and when you have the mental space, time, energy and money for it, you should absolutely go for it.

    “I’m here for pick up” I hand him my receipt.

    “Ah, the lady with the favorite slippers!” The biggest grin appears on his face as he reaches in the cupboard where he stores the fixed items.

    He hands them back while explaining some special care instructions, so I can keep them for even longer.

    I walk out into the winter air with my favorite slippers in hand.

    Be the lady with the favorite slippers. It feels great.

  • Perfectionism

    The number of attempts I’ve made at writing this blog, or any blog, can no longer be counted on one hand. Which is a shame, really. Not because of the “many failed” attempts, but because knowing that if I kept going I could’ve already been where I want to be.

    So what keeps making me stop? What is it that makes me feel the need to wipe everything and start over?

    The answer isn’t black and white, but I suspect it has something to do with perfectionism.

    Every time I had posted a few writings, the urge came to delete everything and “start over”. To “do it better” next time. But why does “better” always seem to mean “start over”?

    I think it’s because, as I learned new things along the way, I felt I had to apply those lessons retroactively. Not just to what I was writing now, but to everything I’d already published. Even the old posts (especially the old posts) no longer felt “good enough.” I didn’t want to show the phases of my beginnerness.

    Everything had to be perfect from the beginning. No missteps. No messy progress. Just polished output from the very first try.

    That’s a weird standard to hold myself to. And quite frankly, an unhealthy one.

    It sucks the joy out of learning… Perfectionism isn’t just about being good, it’s about trying to erase all signs of growth. To be at expert level from the start.

    Before writing this, I looked up the definition of “perfection.”
    It said: “a flawless state where everything is exactly right.”

    But what is exactly right and who gets to decide?

    Maybe perfection is just a made-up construct.
    A personal myth we hold ourselves to.

    And maybe the pursuit of it is what’s keeping me from doing the very thing I set out to do: write.
    Perfection is not the goal, learning is.
    I’m not starting over this time. I’m starting from here.