post-it perfectionist

North Head Lighthouse @ Cape DisappointmentOn the advice of a friend, I assigned myself the task last week of letting myself make mistakes.

I mean, obviously I make mistakes all the time, because I'm A) human, and B) not perfect. Duh. I am biologically wired, however, to try to be perfect at everything, and only years and years of tamping down that dictatorial little personality streak like a 1980s South American despot has made it possible for me to be okay with just being okay. Hooray for maturity!

However. When I am under a lot of pressure and facing mounting tasks with unforgiving deadlines and high expectations, my inner dictator seizes the opportunity for a military coup of the State of Brittney. I'm in the midst of just that sort of period at the moment, in which work and website business pressures are combining to make me twitch a bit with the effort not to Be The Best At Everything by trying to accomplish all my responsibilities at once. Hence the advice of a friend for a little radical reverse psychology, to not just not be perfect, but to actually let the mistakes happen.

She may secretly be trying to kill me.

Last week, I was at the office late, trying to get out the door but with three separate piles that each needed to go to three separate people, and three separate post-its to be written. It's a good thing I was in the office alone, because as I was rewriting each of those notes, I had to bust out laughing at myself. Yes, you read that right:  I was rewriting post-its. As in, I had done a first draft, edited for mistakes and clarity, then rewritten them so that they would read well and fit nicely on the selected post-it size.

I, um, may have some work to do on this not-being-a-perfectionist thing.

(Yeah, the picture above has nothing to do with anything, I just love it. The pics from our daytrip to Cape Disappointment are posted, by the way, as promised.)

breakfast, Lunchbot Pico:

• oatmeal (with butter & maple syrup in the condiment containers), not yet cooked
• raisins, to mix in the oatmeal
• peach slices

lunch, Lunchbot Duo:

• Sal's Amazingly Wondrous Wings (the very last of the batch made on Saturday)
• wee potatoes
• celery sticks
• carrot sticks
• tomato
• dark chocolate and dried cherries

Comments

[Tammy]

As a fellow post-it perfectionist, I applaud your efforts to let mistakes happen and empathize with the effort this takes. I know all about that angst that kicks in when some arbitrary breaking point hits (deadline, not being able to find things in my "piles" one too many times, x days of something not being done suddenly becomes one day too many, etc.) and then I have this compulsion to drive myself and everyone else in my family crazy by getting "it all" done at once and freaking out at anyone who gets in my way/slows me down. Maybe we should form a support group. Hee.

[Bitty]

Oh man. We would be the most organized and perfect support group in existence. Our group materials would always be well formatted and grammatically correct, meetings would start and stop precisely on schedule, and we would thoroughly document our progress using a charming but efficient incentive system that would involve highlighters, spreadsheets, and gold stars.