Hello, my name is Andrea, and I am a recovering perfectionist.
I used to be the student that cried when she got a 98% on a test. I had to make everything look great. Following every rule to the letter was important. My drawers had to be just so.
My parents rarely had to punish me. When I did something wrong, I felt so bad that I punished myself. Their job was calming me down and talking me through the mistake and what I should have done instead.
Then, I had some years in which I was not the only one telling me that I was an awful human being when I made a mistake. The verbal abuse that catalogued everything I had done wrong in the last few weeks and threw it in my face did not help things.
Mind you, I was an obliger of the highest order at this point in my life. There weren’t many things I did wrong. Most of them were small mistakes that should not have come back to haunt me, but the person doling out the verbal abuse needed an outlet and I was the easiest target.
You should have heard the thoughts in my head after that.
So this is where I was as I walked into young adulthood. I felt like I needed to be perfect in order to be seen and heard and loved and understood. You can imagine how that worked out for me. Luckily, I have a good support system and a thick skin.
Then, I went to live in a country where I thought I spoke the language. However, it turns out that taking Spanish in school for a bunch of years gets you close to understanding native speakers, but not at all fluent.
I had to let go of perfect and settle for good enough.
Perfect has come knocking on my door from time to time. I certainly had quite the love affair with perfectionism in the early part of my teaching career.
But, perfectionism has such an ugly side. It can stop you in your tracks. It can fill you with overwhelm and make you give up because you feel that you will never get it done correctly so why do it at all.
I have systematically worked to counteract those thought patterns and get myself into a healthy place.
Enter challenges.
Yes, the 30-day challenge is motivating and it makes me make a commitment to myself. No, I don’t make myself worry about being perfect. Does this mean that I don’t win some prizes? Of course. But it is the only way I have found to still participate and shed some light on something important to me without drowning in overwhelm.
I am in some different challenge groups and I just marvel and get slightly annoyed at all the people asking if something “counts.” Especially in challenges like book challenges where there really aren’t prizes.
So here is my reflection on this Slice of Life challenge: I did not do it perfectly, but I did it. And going from not writing on my blog in at least 3 years to writing on my blog ALMOST every day of the month (28 days) sounds like a win to me.
This post is a part of the 14th annual Slice of Life Story Challenge. After a few years away, I am challenging myself to write every day in March this year, along with an amazing community of other bloggers. You can find our writing linked up on the Two Writing Teachers blog.
You go, girl! Definitely a win. I say let go of perfect and embrace good enough. It’s the best way to live and you seem to have found it. I enjoyed hearing from you this year.
Yes! I think any day that you write and share it with others is a win! And I think being able to celebrate writing most but not all the days of the month shows such a healthy relationship with perfectionism. I too am a recovering perfectionist, and saw myself in your words. I am a little envious of your ability to celebrate the good enough. Hopefully I’ll get there some day myself.