This evening, I made something I’d been planning for a while – a handmade print of one of my favourite sayings.

This is a phrase that I’ve long appreciated. I first became familiar with it back in 2015, when I was up against a tight deadline with a demanding project at work. Thankfully I had a supportive boss, who recognised that our team were grafting away hard to get a lot of complex tasks completed, and he said this quite a few times! It resonated with me, and made me realise how toxic perfectionism is. If we reject something that works and is good enough, because it’s not perfect, all we’re doing is piling stress onto ourselves and making life difficult.

I’m often my own worst critic, and I have a tendency to try and keep everyone else happy. I don’t handle making mistakes well. This therefore means quite a lot to me, as it gives me permission just to be good, and not perfect. When I beat myself up for not being the best at everything, and when I don’t get everything right, I need to give myself permission to be good, because good is good enough, and I don’t have to be perfect.

I made this using a Victorian printing set, that an old friend got hold of while helping to clear out a church basement. I could have made sure everything was aligned absolutely perfectly, but I settled for good instead! I used a word processor to work out the basic alignment of the text, but otherwise it’s all done by hand without any rulers or additional tools. It came out just as well as I hoped it would.

Anyway, if you like it, I’m offering it for sale on my photography website. You can buy it in various forms of wall art, and I hope it makes your wall look nice. It might not make it look perfect, but it’ll make it look good. 🙂