Today I woke up with a headache but stayed in bed, stretched and breathed until it calmed down. Sometimes this works. After breakfast, I cleaned Tom Collins (my car), even washing his floor mats for the first time since I got him almost a year ago. (Our anniversary is coming up!) On the way home from the car wash, it ironically began to rain. The universe does this a lot. It’s like that kid at the beach who jumps in the middle of your sandcastle after you’ve spent hours working on it. Twisted sense of humor. A real turd.

When I got back from the car wash, I hung my mats up to dry in the garage and piddled around the house–folded clothes, meditated. For a while I read the book I mentioned recently about writing and drawing with your non-dominant hand. The idea is that doing so accesses a different part of your brain, the part where your inner child is located. (So THAT’S where it’s been hiding.) One of the exercises the book asked me to do today was to draw a common object, first with my dominant hand (right), then with my non-dominant one (left). Picking up my pen and looking at my coffee cup, I thought, This isn’t going to go well with EITHER hand.

Y’all, I don’t claim to be an artist. Well, I do claim to be an artist, but I don’t claim to be a draw-er (or a drawer). I actually won some art contests in elementary school, but I haven’t practiced since. All this to say that the picture I’m about to post isn’t stunning. Isn’t that funny, the way we apologize for things we don’t do well? People do that with dance. The say, “I have two left feet,” as if that’s a bad thing, as if they SHOULD know how to dance (or draw, or fix a car, or have sex) just because they’re alive. I’ve noticed children DON’T do this. They just do something–they’ll try anything–just because it’s fun. It doesn’t matter if they’re good at it or not.

I’ll say it again.

It doesn’t matter if you’re good at it or not.

When drawing the coffee cup with my right hand, it was about what I expected. Not award-worthy, but you can tell it’s a coffee cup. Honestly, I think it looks like something I’d draw (I normally doodle squares)–it’s neat and tidy–put-together, rigid, just-so. The left-handed drawing, however, is more free-form. Personally, I think it looks like it’s melting. When I was drawing it, my inner critic was giving me hell. “This is terrible,” it said. But then another voice spoke up, “Hey, watch it. I’m JUST learning. This is pretty fabulous considering I’m not even left-handed, thank you very much.”

When the drawing exercise ended, the next step was evaluating the illustrations. The book asked, “Which do you like better?” And whereas my inner critic was tougher on the left-handed one, I actually liked it better (and still do), since it’s whimsical, fun, and full of potential. Personally, I think it would look great at the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party. Plus, it’s kind of shaky, which is a better, more accurate depiction of my insides than the other cup is. The other cup is my outsides–neat and tidy. But nobody is neat and tidy all the time. I’m certainly not. That’s what I love about the left-handed cup–like me, it doesn’t quite have it together.

What’s more, it’s not trying to be something it isn’t.

We take ourselves so seriously. We think our cars have to be spick and span, our shirts ironed, everything we put online total perfection. We want everyone to believe we have it together. But this is a bunch of shit. No one has it together all the time. Granted, maybe on one hand you do–but on the other hand–look at yourself. This, of course, is normal, the way life works. Things are always coming together, always falling apart. We wash cars, and then it rains. We build sandcastles, and if a child doesn’t destroy them, the tides do. This is a big deal to us, since we think life should be perfect, just-so forever. But life is more whimsical than that, more playful. Never rigid, it’s ever-changing, constantly melting from one thing into the next.