Well, I didn't think it possible, but you've truly given me food for thought! It seems I had gotten myself attached to the idea of perfection as an external immutable goal, a sort of a 'are you perfect, check yes or no,' when in reality it's something far more ephemeral than that, isn't it? Your perfection and my perfection would look entirely different while both being, objectively, perfect — just as yours would have been different a century ago before the advent of social media.

You could have gotten a step ahead of the lovely Miss Josephine Baker and imported a pair of semi-domesticated luxury jackals, for example.

[ that sounds so much better than self-improvement. ]