Continuing with what I wrote about yesterday:
That tendency toward self-excoriation is important in relation to Free Refills because I get down on myself for all sorts of perceived failures in my work here. Sometimes I struggle with drafting--it'll be Saturday evening and I'll find myself still needing to draft 2000 words to meet my quota. Sometimes I struggle with publishing--I won't get a piece up until 11pm, or I'll fight all week getting my pieces up. I'm hard on myself about quality--while in general I'm proud of what I publish here, not every piece is a gem.
I get down, too, because Free Refills doesn't look all sexy-shiny; I haven't yet figured out what the underlying code should look like. And I get down on myself because I only rarely promote the work I'm doing here.
Obviously I'm still fighting with my tendency toward perfectionism. I mean, I've clearly given myself some level of permission to be imperfect, or I never would have been able to keep myself publishing every weekday for all these months. But I think there's a part of me that's hiding nonetheless. "It's safe to be imperfect, because as long as I float along and don't tell anyone what I'm doing here, no one will ever know."
If the goal is growth (and it is), this might not be the best approach.