It Doesn’t Have to be perfect…

   I’m gonna be honest, right now I’m so mad I could scream, cry, and throw my stupid ipad against a wall. I just spent the better part of an hour writing five paragraphs of a blog post and then my stupid screen blinked, logged me out, and deleted literally everything I wrote. EVERYTHING. I prayed that something saved in drafts, but it literally didn’t. Not one single word. I’m fighting the urge to just give up and say f@#k it, the universe clearly doesn’t want me to write at this moment, but I’m just too stubborn to quit, so here I am AGAIN. I swear to everything, if it blinks again, I will be writing a strongly worded letter to the people in charge of this platform. And as I wrote this sentence, it dawns on me, I can write in GoogleDocs where everything automatically saves, then copy and paste to my website! Eureka!

    This actually ties in really well with what I was trying to say before I was so rudely interrupted. That I get so focused on making everything perfect and trying to fit everything into neatly organized rows that I get discouraged when it doesn’t. And this is so very contrary to the way that my brain actually works. Between the anxiety and the ADHD it’s like I’ve got 100 little versions of myself running around my head constantly dropping things, arms full of laundry, books, papers, and to-do lists. I get pinned down by analysis  paralysis, focusing so hard on all the possible outcomes that I can’t make a decision.
    So how do we slow it down? How do you or I get the minions in our heads to just sit down and take a coffee break? There’s no one easy, simple answer, but for me, it starts with just grabbing something out of the pile, pinning it down, and focusing on it until it is done, even if it’s not perfect. Take this very blog post for example. I’ve been putting it off for months. I didn’t intend for that to happen, but I kept chasing my tail worrying about what I wanted to say and if people would judge me and how to make it grammatically correct. But it honestly doesn’t matter. Writing makes me feel good and the people who might judge me clearly have their own baggage anyway. So, I just grabbed this task, writing a blog post, and I got to it. I’ve let the dogs out, given the dogs their meds, grabbed some breakfast, and said hi to my husband when he got up, but every time I get distracted, I just say, “I’VE GOT TO WRITE MY BLOG POST!” (and yes, I might have yelled it because one of the dogs barked).
    Yes, I was immensely frustrated when the first draft was eaten by the internet. Yes, I’ve gotten distracted by my imperfect brain. But I’ve centered on finishing this one task because I know that once it is done, I will feel amazing. I will know that I can indeed, set my mind to something and get it done. And you know what? Perfection is just an illusion anyway. It’s an idea we chase in pursuit of how we imagine it will make us feel when the cosmos magically align and all the things are in neat little rows, but it’s an impossible standard. The universe will inevitably shit on your first draft, the dog will barf in the middle of your clean carpet, and life is simply too short to let those things keep you from finding your zen. 
    When it’s hard to grapple and hold down just one task, break it down into tiny digestible bites. I’m writing this blog post, and then I really need to clean my office. But my office is currently the pit of despair, so instead, I’m gonna focus on filing my dry polish stash (yes, I organize my nail strips in boxes in alphabetical order). It doesn’t matter that my desk will still be cluttered, or that the floor still needs vacuumed, or that I still haven’t found my lucky pen. My polish will be sorted, and that will feel so satisfying. It’s not about being perfect, it’s about being happy and you get to choose how to define that for yourself. Today, I define it by a finished blog post.