Join my email book club. Over 330,000 people read 5-minutes a day. To see what books I'm featuring this week, go to: http://www.dearreader.com/
Dear Reader,
The last line of the email read, "I hope you are a perfectionist always looking for a chance for improvements, otherwise please disregard."
A perfectionist--I hope that's not me. Attending to details--yes, I'm guilty. But obsessing over every detail, so things have to look just right, I tried that approach for awhile. It was tiring and it never reciprocated. Near-misses, no hope of being perfect, the stuff that looks like it's a reject--these are the things that bring me the most joy in my life.
My husband bought a tribal drum from a woman who had been using it as part of a therapy program for children. Frankly when I first saw it, I couldn't understand why he was even paying money for it. It was a filthy-looking thing. Dirt marks infused into the tan sides of the drum and the skin over the top was reinforced with two wide strips of duct tape, obviously covering worn spots that were about ready to break through.
It was a miserable mess of a thing, but for some reason I fell in love with the drum when we were driving home. Tap, tap, it had a pretty good sound. I didn't know anything about playing a drum, but I was beating on it--loudly--and making up my own songs all the way home.
I found the perfect spot on the living room floor for the drum, and with my husband's permission, claimed it as "mine." My husband was thrilled he'd discovered a treasure for me and he wanted to clean it up and make it look even better. So one afternoon, when I wasn't around, he washed the dirt off the sides, tidied up the skin, took off the duct tape and reinforced it with something clear. When I got home he proudly showed me the "new" drum.
I never played the drum again after that. I didn't want to hurt my husband's feelings, but after a couple of weeks, I finally explained to him that for some reason when he cleaned up the drum, it lost the character that had attracted me to it. The used, tattered-looking drum looked approachable to a novice like me, no rules, no need to do it the right way; instead I could just be myself.
Thanks for reading with me. It's so good to read with friends.
To see the "new drum" go to:
http://tinyurl.com/yv4use
Suzanne Beecher
Suzanne@DearReader.com
http://www.DearReader.com
P.S. I FELL IN LOVE with two poems last week. I found them in the book, The Spoken Word Revolution, Redux. Read a poem, or listen to the poet read to you, get a great recipe and enter the drawing for a free copy of the book. Let me know if you liked the poems, too. Go to: http://tinyurl.com/ypof6d
READ THE CLASSICS: Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons and enter the free Penguin Classic's Drawing. Go to: http://tinyurl.com/35ylrr
Comments