Perfect is easy to scroll past. The human fingerprints are what make people stop.

Smooth work slides by because there is nothing for the eye to snag on. A slight wrongness, a hand-drawn edge, a voice that does not sit perfectly in the mix, tells a person that somebody was actually there. Templates and machines produce clean, and clean has become cheap. Evidence of a human being is the part that is now rare.

Leave one honest mark in the next thing you make. A visible correction, the take with the breath still in it, your own handwriting. Pay attention to which parts people mention back to you.