As a recovering perfectionist, I know a thing or two about hiding my projects away.

For most of my life, whenever I looked back on something I'd produced that no longer met my standards, I'd make it - um - disappear. And don't even get me started on all the things that never saw the (public) light of day.

But in the last decade-ish, I've started thinking about things in a different way. And to prove it, I'm sharing my old travel blog with you, Follow Ben and Jenna.

To be honest, I still cringe when I look at the blog. They layout is all crowded, there are broken links, the menus on the mobile site hardly work at all, and some of the writing is ... ahem. (Especially my earliest posts, like this one. "First we went here, and next we went here, and then we went here....")

But now I cringe in the way I do when I see a gawky preteen photo of myself. It makes me laugh and remember how awkward and new everything felt at the time. It makes we wish I could throw my arms around my earlier self and tell her, "Believe me: It's all going to be okay."

Coming to terms with the fact that we all start somewhere, that most of our early work is kinda crappy, but that it's totally okay and expected because that's exactly how we learn and get better, is the single most important thing for an entrepreneur or creative to wrap their head around.

Plus, people tend to be far more understanding than we might fear.

Fail to give perfectionism the boot, and you'll waste A LOT of unnecessary time and subject yourself to much unfortunate self-flagellation.

And next week I'll talk more about how exactly to start doing that.

Here's to giving perfectionism the boot,
Jenna