“Nobody’s Perfect” and Other Garbage Idioms

Everyone always says “nobody’s perfect” to somehow arouse in you the feeling of freedom to experiment or try something uncomfortable. But I’m sick of that cliché. Why use the word “perfect” in such a way that is untouchable? Language, after all, is made by humans for humans. You are a human being—you have to learn and try things. That is perfection in my book. Human beings are not static. Nor do we reach a kind of state of perfection like the Eastern mystics talk about. We live in a world of values that we have to choose every day. And I feel the same way about morality.

To be moral does not mean to be omniscient or all-knowing in order to be good. Another one of my pet peeves is when people say, “Morality isn’t black and white.” Well, Ayn Rand would tell you that it most certainly is. And here is how: It’s true that there can be some gray actions on a day-to-day basis. However, the culmination of those actions and the motivation behind each of them leads to being moral (good) or immoral (bad) as a whole person. An individual is made up of values, and those values can only be achieved and kept when they are identified and morally achieved. For example, if you want a greater sense of self-esteem, then you practice really hard to ace a test, truly learn the subject matter, and get that good grade. If you want to damage that sense of self-esteem, then you cheat on the test, not learn the material, but still get an A.

I have “made it.” I am happy. I have a wonderful, supportive husband. We hope to have our own children soon. I have a beautiful home to live in. I have fresh food and water to eat and drink. I am almost thirty and healthy in body and mind. Yes, I may want an updated wardrobe or neighbors that weren’t living so close to us, but that’s just “icing on the cake.” They are wants and not necessities. How did I get here? Was it hard? Was I ridiculed? Yes…but that is, unfortunately, what it takes today when you choose to be good.

I spent most of my time in school refusing sexual advances, avoiding physical fights, and not attending parties where I knew that drugs might be involved. Instead, I spent my waking moments attentively in the classroom, ferociously reading at home, and eventually finding school friends whom I could readily learn with and be around. Once I graduated, I found myself in my first normal nine-to-five job as a receptionist. And that is when my moral choices became more complex. After the first year or so, I began to get fidgety, then I started to resent my job. I felt like I woke up there and fell asleep there most days, especially on those cold, dark winter months… I learned the ins and outs of the job by that point and I needed to move on. I should have moved on earlier, but the “golden handcuffs” of the money were on. So, I began to search out innocuous things on the internet at work when no one needed my assistance. I started with taking typing tests and then searching for other types of work, all reasonable things, in my mind, to look up within the framework of my receptionist job. I was making myself better for the job at hand—continuous training, I told myself. But then I landed on the idea of transcript proofreading from home. From home…oh how I missed my haven of books and culture and not having a long commute shoved in a public bus with everyone else who worked in the city. I stayed sardine-shaped at work, my spine poking out through the skin to shield myself from the outside world.

Soon enough, I was sitting at my desk in another place entirely. I was no longer just the receptionist but a proofreader-in-training. Whenever my time was freed up, I was on their computer taking tests, learning about frequently confused homophones and transposed words. I printed off pages to work from since I didn’t have a printer at home. But the slope got more slippery in my head. I faked smiles and laughs and worked just enough to squeak by. And then I began to feel guilty. I was now having to make choices that left me either feeling used by the company or ashamed. These were some of my thoughts (see if you recognize some of these daily compromises you make in your job): Well, my boss didn’t tell me I’d have to stay this late, so I deserve the ten cents worth of paper. Or, this client on the phone was angry with me for no reason, so I should get an extra five minutes to eat my lunch today. Or, X always gets in late, so I’m going to arrive late just for today. And these kinds of calculations were constant. It was as if I was on this endless tightrope between making moral and immoral choices. Their policy was clear about not doing personal work during business hours, which probably included taking their paid-for paper and ink, taking extra time off, and arriving late. I knew what I was doing, but my own unhappiness made things seem even…fair.

I should have left earlier than I did, but I waited until I finished the proofreading program and started building up my business so that I no longer had to make tough and often poor moral decisions every day that I could feel were progressively eating away at my soul. I missed feeling the simplicity of just saying no to things in school and then following the schedule that was set by my parent and teachers. I no longer had that option. Life as an adult was my own, and I needed to spend my time wisely, make up my own schedule, and end up a lot happier than I was feeling in those days. As soon as I had a few clients under my belt, I resigned from my position.

Not everyone needs to quit their jobs and work for themselves. I’m sure there are plenty of people who love their jobs and are challenged enough on a daily basis to not start feeling resentful. But the moral degrees game, I believe, is very present in the “corporate world” today. Thankfully, when we do not cloud our emotions with drugs or alcohol, we have an easier time getting a clue about what we are doing—not only to the company we may work for but to ourselves. If you feel bad at the end of the day, then how have you spent it? Have you made compromises all day that only attacked your self-esteem and, thereby, your long-term happiness?

We are not static creatures. Every day we make moral choices, but we can make them easier or harder to choose. For instance, brushing your teeth comes automatically now since we’ve been doing it since childhood. Yet, it is an act of choosing life. You are taking care of your oral health to live another day healthy on earth. You have the option to skip it and risk cavities and all the deterioration of the body that follows, but that by definition is immoral since Ayn Rand states that “Life or death is man’s only fundamental alternative. To live is his basic act of choice. If he chooses to live, then a rational ethics will tell him what principles of action are required to implement his choice. If he does not choose to live, nature will take its course” (Philosophy: Who Needs It?). A dead man doesn’t need morality.

So was I behaving poorly in my receptionist job? Toward the end, I would say yes, I did immoral things. However, it was the good, moral choice that made me resign and not continue to suck off the money teat forever while just giving the minimum of my efforts to my job. I regained the tarnished bits of my self-esteem by leaving and venturing off on my own. Do I make “easy” money now? No. Do I make as much money yet? No. But am I happier? Yes. Am I still perfect after learning from such an experience? Yes.

We all live atop the scales of justice until our final breath is taken. There are days we will make mistakes and there will be repercussions. But we must have the courage to address the emotions that come with an immoral decision in order to be good. Clouding, hiding, submerging those feelings and the reality of the situation, which, sadly, so many adults do who don’t understand the way out, can only lead to the destruction of the soul. Bad, immoral, imperfect people are those who know that what they do makes them feel awful, they may even know it is immoral, and continue to do it anyway—in the face of reality. They refuse to change when all evidence suggests they must do so to continue living. They begin to become walking billboards for death, not life. Forget brushing my teeth, forget clocking into work on time, forget keeping my child fed, forget that the gun is going off into an innocent person’s body because life has no meaning for me. I am the absence of life now; I am death. It is not an irrational spiral that stirs people on the outside to shout “Madman!” It is a man who has lost his sense of morality and progressively allows the disease to weaken his values down to dust.

I believe that most people are good, perfect beings who would benefit from more of a culture that advocates paying attention to our emotions—not hiding them. They can oftentimes help detect a bad decision before reason can come in to explain. Books, especially literary fiction, are also saviors for their honest look into people’s good and bad decisions and the outcomes they face from them. I believe that morality can be learned and a good, perfect person should be open to its serious study. They will learn that there are varying degrees of values on a person’s set of priorities, and the more attuned they are to them, the happier they will be with a clearer vision of their goals in life. Perfection is all about making mistakes and learning from them. That struggle to understand cause and effect is what makes man quintessentially human.

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Links: http://www.aynrandlexicon.com; https://www.amazon.com/Philosophy-Who-Needs-Ayn-Rand/dp/0451138937

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Views Expressed Disclaimer: The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily represent the postings, strategies, or opinions of American Wordsmith, LLC. Please also know that while I consider myself an Objectivist and my work is inspired by Objectivism, it is not nor should it be considered Objectivist since I am not the creator of the philosophy. For more information about Ayn Rand’s philosophy visit: aynrand.org.

Creating a Lifestyle Worth Living

As I approach my thirties, I have come to truly learn what kind of job I can not only handle but not dread from day to day. From micromanaging bosses to the gossip around the watercooler, I have not looked back since choosing to go freelance. I worked during college at my school’s private library for four years as a part-time student assistant, then as a receptionist in a law firm, and finally as a library assistant in a public library before being fed up with the pace and lifestyle those kinds of jobs made for me.

I have always been self-driven and goal-directed without the “helpful push” of a boss. I have always been my own boss. (My carefully filled-out agenda each school year would tell you as much). And with this personality came the difficulty of watching my peers slack off and enjoy standing still in their jobs while I felt like I was suffocating. Once I had paid off my student loans in about five years, I resigned from my last employee-centered job and went full-time freelance.

I began my freelance proofreading journey by taking the Proofread Anywhere course in 2017, and by 2018, I had completed the exam successfully. At this time, I was a receptionist at a law firm because the law had always interested me. My philosophy professors in college certainly pushed their students into law during my time there. It was considered a more “practical job” over becoming a philosopher, I suppose.

Proofreading has now become my longest-held job, and I have no plans to quit now. To me, typos had always jumped out on the page while reading books or other people’s papers. Perhaps I can thank my mother and father for reading to me at an early age and allowing me to challenge myself with more difficult reading material. My mother was also a writer and her day job consisted of copywriting for publishing houses, and my father wrote poetry for pleasure. Words were always a part of my world.

As a child, I loved holding my younger brother hostage, reading out loud from any book I could get my hands on. I would read for hours until my voice gave out. All of those moments of getting lost in a book, listening to the cadence of my voice rising and falling like waves, were so deliciously addictive. Nothing interested me more than continuing to read…and I still feel the same way.

With copious amounts of reading blossoms a desire for quiet, space, and routine. I grew accustomed to sitting in my home alone in silence and maximizing my time to accommodate more reading. This lifestyle translated extremely well into becoming a remote proofreader. I pull up the chair to my desk with my rather small laptop open on it, sitting in the quiet and reading most of my transcripts and manuscripts out loud. The lull of my voice carries the words back into my head, tripping an alarm every time I come across an error or something that simply does not sound or look right.

I usually have a split screen between the piece I’m proofreading and the Internet or a style guide sheet. Usually, reference books are strewn around me on various tables to my left and right. The thing about proofreading is that you have all the answers at your fingertips—you just have to know where to quickly search for them. Decision fatigue sets in after answering a million questions that crop up after reading every sentence with so much care. This is why I am being paid to do it. Proofreading can cause headaches, eyestrain, and fatigue. I have experienced it all. But I am good at it, and, while it is hard work, I love it.

Opening up a fresh transcript from a court reporter, I learn so much about any number of topics. I always wanted to learn everything growing up, and since we have yet to produce a chip to insert into our brains, I have had to spend time reading to learn. My desire to know more is not hindered by my job now—it is quenched. I learn new legal terms in Latin or medical terms or criminal slang on any given day.

When a publishing company asked me to copyedit and/or proofread for them a few years into my proofreading career, I paused. In college, we had creative writing workshops which were essentially learning to give editorial advice on everything from developmental, structural, and grammatical aspects. And I loathed it. Why? Sadly, the culture in this country, especially in the universities, is one of liberal, collectivist thought. I disagreed to my core with most of the stories. The fictional pieces were filled with things the college students had read in their other classes or filled with childish clichés from a lack of reading enough or riddled with grammatical errors that were acceptable to pass off as a “stylistic choice” thanks to modern writers everywhere. Not only was editing not appealing to me, but freelance writing and journalism paid for writers to produce work for businesses and products that I did not care about. My words (and brainpower) felt too precious to waste on those challenging jobs, writing was already hard enough.

My college days taught me that I would never be able to become a professor, though I loved learning, or an editor, though I loved writing, or a traditionally published author, though I knew my writing was good enough. My choices were made and shaped so much by this culture. But without feeling too much pity for myself, I decided that I still wanted to live a happy life on this earth right here and now.

So I pulled away from the “traditional 9–5” in exchange for the atypical freelance life. I took control of who I interacted with on a daily basis, which mostly consists now of my husband, family, and friends. I behave with the proper etiquette to all strangers I meet, but I do not engage any more than I need to. I guard my time carefully, and I devote myself to the most black-and-white type of work possible in the writing world: proofreading.

In another blog post, I wrote about how I considered proofreading a skill, calligraphy a craft, and writing an art. I wrote the novels that were in my soul when they needed to be written and put them out into the world myself. I practiced calligraphy after a long workday to help free my mind from the meaning of words to focus more on the beautiful shapes they made instead. (Plus, I had always wanted my cursive to look like my mother’s when I was young). However, in the spirit of transparency, living in Iowa and in this dormant age, the royalty checks are not large enough and the calligraphy clients are few and far between. Most of my money comes from proofreading alone.

While I struggle financially, I am not a “starving artist” thanks to the help of my wonderful husband. I surely help supplement our family income, but I am not at all the breadwinner. I am learning to be okay with my status, investing myself in more of the domestic duties around the home while continuing to learn as much as I can, since knowledge means much more to me than wealth. In a proper society, the value that I produce would bring me the appropriate amount of money, but this is not a healthy period. I acknowledged this reality, and so I adapted my life accordingly.

I continue to incorporate my skill, craft, and art into my daily life, and it is not something I ever plan to retire from. I won my freedom back from a school system that expected us to conform to the traditional workforce. I have created a life that I feel good about. And with my husband and me beginning to plan for children, I can stay at home with them in the future while working. A new chapter of my life is beginning and, for once, I feel grounded and in control of it.

My hope is more people think critically about the work that would fit best with their own personality and lifestyle. I realize that my path of being very much a homebody and self-directed is not for everyone. But it is what makes me happy. What makes you happy? If you had all the free time in the world, what would you do with your time? Is there a way you can monetize your passion for something? Go out there and create the world you want to live in, even if that is only within your own four walls.

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Views Expressed Disclaimer: The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily represent the postings, strategies, or opinions of American Wordsmith, LLC. Please also know that while I consider myself an Objectivist and my work is inspired by Objectivism, it is not nor should it be considered Objectivist since I am not the creator of the philosophy. For more information about Ayn Rand’s philosophy visit: aynrand.org.