One of the things that I’m constantly learning from developing other artistic skills like drawing and painting, is how important it is to free myself from the need to be perfect to create something, anything, when what really matters is the truth that even a creation that sucks is better than not having created anything at all. Engaging in different expressions of art helps me to understand this.

It’s imperative to find a way to be free from the need to create something “perfect” because this need to put perfection before presence kills more dreams than any dictator ever could.

Sad really.

When many good perfumery materials are expensive and the perfumer is restrained by a budget this creates a great need to not waste a single drop of juice and create something perfect the first go.

Funny.

Even if success does happen right away, not an impossibility, what is more important is that as creatives we are able to reproduce that success with confidence. Not only but perfection is in direct opposition to the terms beginner, or perfumer in training, student, apprentice, or amateur. We have effectively built ourselves a great prison of procrastination leaving it impossible to be what we are, continual learners — even if we are masters of our craft. There will never be another time for us to be free to make mistakes as when we are beginners, and yet we hastily want to cash in those chips for perfection. We must be free. We must leave room for serious and frequent mess ups, it’s the only way out and forward.

This is why being present is so important. For each one of us it will look like something different. For me it means, sitting down every day – typically in the winter this means starting a fire in a room that is 14°C – of every week to do scent evaluations and writing content which gets me closer to the insights, the happy coincidences, the intuiting possible accords, the connection with our readers and customers which in turn gets me closer to a scent that is a winner with our customers.

There’s no way around it, plan to be present every day for your scent encounters and it will be like taking your vitamin C and eating lots of fruit during the winter time, it won’t immunise you from a cold or the flu, but it’s good insurance that you’ll get stuff done and move forward in your learning.

And remember to keep your light on.