FOMO as a Manifestation of the Pursuit of Perfectionism

And an alternative: LOMO

Classes • Workbooks • Consulting • Merch!

I fell pretty hard for my good friend’s girlfriend last year when I was in Costa Rica on a makeshift writing retreat. We can call my friend Jess and her girlfriend Alice. With all my dietary restrictions, one of my go-to, failsafe snacks is sliced cured meat, which is called ‘lomo,’ meaning tenderloin. I pulled a package out of my backpack on our weekend trip to Monteverde and Alice told me, “That’s such a move. Like, I would not fuck with someone who pulls meat out of their bag like that.”

On another occasion I got some lomo at the grocery store. A stranger sitting outside asked me, “What is that?” I said, “It’s lomo.” Alice and Jess laughed at me. “It’s lomo,” they mocked. Later, Jess said, “Lomo is like lack of missing out. Like you’re always where you’re supposed to be.” I said, “Let’s get matching tattoos.”

I was talking to a friend the other day about perfectionism as paralysis (see Make Dumb Shit). The panic that sets in at every point of decision-making: “Am I making the right choice or the wrong choice?” This is a binary, and we hate binaries over here. For an artist especially, this will inhibit all kinds of exploration and play. But just in daily life—which coffee shop is the right choice for me to get work done? Branzino or steak? This shirt or that shirt?—we can end up spending more time making the choice than doing the thing. Fear sets in, especially when we don’t know if and how we can get out of the results of the choice we’ve made.

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