On 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.)