I am a bit of a perfectionist. You probably wouldn’t know it by looking at my house … or my desk …or my life. But I am. And part of why you probably wouldn’t notice it is because I spend a lot of time trying to perfect things instead of just being done with them. Or sometimes, I spend so much time thinking about doing them that I never actually get around to doing them. It’s not good. But I really feel like over the past year or so with everything that’s gone on, chiefly my new job and our house situation, that I’ve become quite a bit better about calling it quits when it’s time and moving on, figuring out when the returns have started diminishing. Just a few things I have learned to chill on:
- Tabby’s homework and the kids school things in general. She’s a first grader for goodness sake and she is NOT behind. Missing a day or being late on homework or ignoring the take home book is OK. School picnics are nice, but not mandatory.
- The food we eat. In an ideal world, we’d be eating more home made things starring veggies. But in an ideal world, we wouldn’t be spending 2+ hours of our day commuting. Subway is our friend.
- My cleanliness standards. 800 sf is not enough for our family. Period. There will be things in my way. The house will be dirty again mere minutes after I clean because four people are using the bathroom and the dog’s hair is all concentrated into this small space.
- The exercise. I enjoy it, but it’s not the end of the world if I don’t get it every day. I can choose what I eat and that is as effective (probably more so) than burning off a few hundred calories on the treadmill.
- Work stuff. Done > Perfect. I had a proposal a couple of weeks ago that was ready to go but I just had to go back in and fix a font mis-match on a couple of page numbers. Somewhere in there, inDesign went mad and deleted my text box and it went to our owner without half the info. We salvaged it, but it was a mess and all because I couldn’t leave well enough alone.
- Photos. If I take them, awesome. If I get them off the camera, great. If I distribute them or upload them, swell. A photo book is probably not in anyone’s future at the moment.
And saying “enough already” to these things has allowed me time for other things. Taking Tabby on a Mommy daughter date. Planning a birthday party for one of my besties. Reading books to my kids. Going for a bike ride with my hubby. Reading an actual book. Sitting and doing absolutely nothing for a few minutes. Taking the kids to the park after dinner. It’s good.
But man am I going to go OCD on some stuff when we finally move. Rome wasn’t cleaned in a day.