Monday, April 11, 2011

Good 'Nuff

Another rainy Monday, but that's alright, after a gorgeous day like yesterday, a little rain is alright. I officially withdrew from school on Saturday, and I am at peace with it.  It is going to take some getting used to (having free moments to myself) but I do believe this is exactly what I need.  I finished one of my two incompletes yesterday, that feels pretty darned good, although I am still experiencing a lot of anxiety surrounding the other paper I have to write. In speaking to the prof's about how to go about actually getting the work done one of them encouraged me to get to a place where I was alright with 'good enough' so that I could get credit and move on.  I cringed when he mentioned it, and I am cringing as I write this- good enough is not a concept I have ever let myself truly embrace, and for the most part I think that is a smart way to be... although I suppose, in certain circumstances good enough is warranted.

As I sat down to write the paper yesterday I tried to wrap my mind around what good enough looks like.  To me, that is an entirely subjective concept.  The prof said that all I need was an 80%, and that I need not waste my time trying for perfection...I can appreciate his sentiment, but my mantra is generally to shoot for perfection and hope it lands somewhere in the vicinity of good enough for me.  That usually translates into writing a paper in one foul swoop. Sleeping on it. Tearing it apart the next day, re-writing it, sending it to two or three friends to edit, piecing it back together again and then putting a final draft together.  And, yeah. I guess that's more like 150% effort as opposed to the needed 80.

So I went to my favorite Sunday morning writing place and pounded on the keyboard for an hour or two and then called it finished.  And, I will say it was super hard to walk away and call it finished.  But I think one of the lessons I am learning is that striving for perfection can also mean strolling toward insanity.  If I am going to keep any sense about me, striving for perfection in everything I do is not sustainable.  I have to learn to pick my battles, and that if I do have to complete something to 'good enough' standards it does not mean that I am going to spiral out of lackadaisical control.  Turning in a paper that is not my best work, but merely good enough at the request of the prof does not mean I just bought a one way ticket to failure land.  It's just so paradoxical to think of giving some things up in order to get other things that are more important (here's my paper-sanity please, thank you). 

All my life I have had this unreasonable fear of being a fuck-up.  Not necessarily a fuck-up in the eyes of others, but more in my own eyes.  I am deathly afraid of letting myself down, but I often set that bar so impossibly high that even a bucket truck couldn't help me get there... I know, the paradoxes abound.  So, as I learn to loosen my death grip on the illusionary control in other areas of my life, I will now add this one to that list.  Because I am only a fuck-up, failure, lazy, loser if I judge myself to be.  And those are all negative judgments that have got to go with this spring cleaning of the mentality.  Trust is a toughy for me, especially when it comes to trusting myself-I think I may need to re-evaluate that :)