I’ve got one better than that.

I think it is my favourite time of day to be outside when the sun is low in the sky and sending shafts of light through the bushes as I pick single ripe black raspberries carefully from the clusters of red and green ones. The leaves rustle; the town is quiet and I can almost imagine that I am alone.
But then I think of the noises of life of mid-day, the sounds of insects at work when the sun is high and the feeling of a day still to be lived.
I'm never quite sated. There is always something better. Understand, though, that I am happy in the moment even while a quick scan tells me that the moment could be better, if . . .
Movies rarely end as they should, in my opinion. Part-way through, I am already fast-tracking to the end, predicting who will say and do what to bring about my preferred conclusion. When the movie ends and the screen goes unpredictably black at what I deem to be the worst moment - how inconsiderate, I think to myself.
I hate games where one can choose alternate endings and cannot bear to think of a novel with alternate endings. What unnecessary contriving for something I do anyway.
The most difficult part of any feature story I have written about people in our community has always been the ending. Even editorials and columns have their endings changed several times before one seems to fit. And even then, late at night of the day we go to press, I think: I should have changed that last sentence.
Should the tree have one more string of lights? Should I add more stock to that almost-perfect gravy? More flowers in that arrangement? Dig that flower bed a little larger?
Suggest more lighting to that event organizer? Or would less be better?
I am sure there is a name for this constant wavering and the feeling that if one stops here, it is just settling for something instead of seeing if it could be better still. But if there is a name, I could likely think of a better one.
Trying to get to best or better has sometimes led me down the wrong path.
As a small girl, I cut the hair off most of my dolls to see if they would look better and could never get over the idea that toy companies refused to make dolls that came with wigs.
Sandpile construction never ended. One more road just there; wait, make a few more fields in that space.
Life went on.
Too much research in university and I felt there was information that was way beyond anything that I could synthesize. Why ask a university student to babble on when erudite authors had already summed it up so well? Too much reading and I got the feeling that I would never write again.
Leave the iron on that linen blouse just those few seconds more to get all the creases out can lead to a shiny mistake.
Take meringue. There is that magic point at which it is perfect, but if you overwhip it, you don't have meringue at all any more - just white goop.
It is obviously an asset to be an optimist and always believe that things could be better. But there is a time when we should listen to our experience - a time when our perspective should say: good enough just as it is.
In fact, that "good enough" dictum is just the ticket, apparently, in the world of new online media. As opposed to thinking, "work it," we old-model newspaper people are supposed to let go, publish when the job is "good enough" and move on to the next project.
I thought of a second career when I first read that. Impossible, I thought. What about working on something until it is just right? Isn't that what we are all about?
Only sort of. This kind of work is the one challenge where the rubber meets the road in my quest to try just one more thing to make something better. I can't do that to extremes in this environment, or I have to remind myself this is a weekly, not a monthly newspaper.
In truth, I think I am doing this job to learn what may be the hardest thing for me: there is a point that I have to let go and trust that it is as good as it will get.
It doesn't mean you can't take your time, review your work and consider your options. And it doesn't mean settling for second-best.
I think it means seeing moments in life as the full moments they truly are.  It means having the maturity and the humility to accept that my own opinion is just one view.
It means knowing and accepting that I have done my best; it is what it is and I have to let it be.
I am not happy with where these thoughts have taken me. There is no brilliant conclusion. Here I am, struggling with the last sentence.
But maybe how I am is something I will just have to accept.
Most of the time.