Perfectionism

Here I am.  36 years old, no career path to speak of, not married, no kids.  What have I done with my life so far?  Well, I've traveled a lot.  I'm an Anglophile and have managed to visit England 6 times in the last 17 years.  I have a BA in Music Therapy that I've never done much with.  I've taught Kindermusik, managed an office, worked in day cares and special education classrooms.  I've been a private nanny, a Tomatis practitioner and a retail saleswoman.  In a family of people who pick a career path and stick to it come hell or high water, I think I might be my parents' despair.

Am I lazy?  Easily distracted?  Do I quit when the going gets tough?  Probably a little of each.  But it's bigger than that and no one was more shocked than I when I realized the truth. You see, I'm a perfectionist.  If I can't do it right the first time, I'm not interested in it.  Even starting this blog.  I tried to start it almost a year ago and I got so caught up in finding the perfect name for it that I couldn't actually make it to the blogging part of the blog.  I'm pretty sure that I was a fairy in some other incarnation of myself because I seem to think I have a magic wand that I've temporarily mislaid somewhere.  But once I find it, I'll give it a wave and *poof*!  Everything will be the way it's "supposed" to be.

I've been getting nudged by my intuition to just write something for over a year now.  ANYTHING.  Just post something on a blog and get it started.  It doesn't have to be perfect.  It doesn't have to be read by millions of people.  I just need to take that one first step.  So that's what this is.  My first step.  Will it lead anywhere?  I have no idea.  Do I hope that someday I'll make enough money writing that I can quit one (or all) of the three jobs I currently have?  Hell yes.  But for now, I can't even think that far ahead.  I just have to post this one blog.

How often does our desire to do something "perfectly" keep us from really experiencing and enjoying a moment, a day or even our entire lives?  Whether it's moving to New York to try to make it on Broadway, a project at work, or creating the "perfect" holiday dinner - when we get obsessed with not being good enough or not having all the "pieces" in place yet, we sabotage ourselves from really enjoying the experience.  It's kind of like training for a marathon.  You wouldn't expect to go from a 50 pounds overweight, couch-dwelling, potato chip addict to a svelte trained athlete who could run 5 gajillion miles.  Or however many miles a marathon is.  You can probably tell that I fall into the couch-dwelling category at this point.  In any case, my point is that you train.  You take baby steps.

So here it is.  My first baby step.