Getting Out of The Gate

Creative Commons License:  The Hacker Way

I want to do things perfectly.  I want every song, every performance, every picture, every blog entry, every breath I take, to be awesome.  Unfortunately, I am human.  This gets in the way of my pursuit of perfection.  I get pimples, I forget things, sometimes, when I'm nervous, I strum the wrong chord.  I wish there was some sort of photoshop for life that could edit out all my blunders and imperfections.  Maybe if I lived via a holographic projection that would be possible, but until then...I must wrestle down my desire for perfection and make it a goal for myself to GET OUT OF THE GATE!

Last night I watched Taylor Swift's incredible performance at the 2012 Grammy Awards that proved without a doubt that she can sing.  Rewind to the 2010 Grammy Awards and her vocal performance in a duet with Stevie Nicks garnered a backlash of harsh criticism for being pitchy (especially from music industry critic Bob Lefsetz!).   Why has this redemption inspired me so much?  I think it's because I'm inspired to keep moving forward and not allow myself to be crippled by everything that is less than perfect.  This applies to my music, my performances...and my website!  This does not mean I will not continue tweaking and improving upon what I've done.  It only means that I will not allow a lack of perfection to stop me from moving forward.  If Taylor Swift can release Grammy worthy music without having nailed down her ability to sing on pitch under pressure, why can't I allow the same room for growth in my own journey as an artist?

www.lilyc.com

Diving into Chapter 3 of "Music Success in 9 Weeks," I had this grandiose vision, I will REDESIGN my website, it will be epic, it will sing, it will dance, there will be fireworks!  And then, life came knocking on my door.  Work deadlines, hosting gigs, and family commitments to name a few of the many distractions that took away from the vision of losing myself in Wordpress for a week.  And then I took a look at my existing website.  I already have google analytics set up, and I already have a player embedded to hear a sample of my music.  Why fix what isn't broken?

So, instead of investing 5 days of programming time I spent 5 hours tweaking.  I added a few snazzier looking social media icons, included my newest personal pitch and rejigged things, along with changing the homepage photo.

Am I completely satisfied?  Of course not.  But I accept that insatiable perfection monster that lives in my artist heart and will allow it to prompt me towards future growth in development.  In fact, I just registered for a class on HTML and CSS from the fantastic non-profit, Ladies Learning Code.  I will keep improving upon where I am at.  One day, my website may be able to brew a cup of coffee for my fans, but until then, I am happy to let myself GET OUT OF THE GATE!