The great Roz Chast’s recent New Yorker cartoon really hits home. Having once been quite a serious neat-o-phile, I’ve learned over the years that the principle of “enough” can be quite liberating. These days, I have so many things going on, that there is quite a collection—a pile really — of ongoing, unfinished projects waiting in a corner of my space, that I’ll get to eventually. My place waxes and wanes in neatness, my desk a tumble of papers one day, orderly the next. Viewing it as “together enough” gives me the freedom to walk in the park, to talk to a friend, daydream, or read a book, currently, the wondrous H is for Hawk.

It’s a variation of a philosophy I first learned from a therapist friend:

It’s about letting go of a lot of notions of is “right” or “supposed to be” and making peace with the good-enough solutions at hand…which, in fact, are often just SWELL.