I hinted at this in my knowing my limits, flexibility, and even my Instagram posts for this challenge, so I’m just going to go ahead and admit it in full right here: I am a recovering perfectionist.
I know. It’s shocking.
But, really, it’s why I overcomplicate things most of the time. Because I don’t have to just know how to do things, I have to know how to do them right.
It has been easy to be flexible about this blogging challenge, about my teaching, about the 30-day yoga challenge I undertook, about how often I cook, and about how often I go for a walk. Do you know why? Because I have done blogging challenges before. I’ve had to change my teaching mid-semester before. I’ve tried cooking every day, and I know my exercise habits.
You know what I don’t know how to do? Live through a global pandemic.
I hit a wall in week two of the Safer at Home order.
Then I hit a wall during week three.
See, what happened is that I was actually doing too much, still. Too much talking to people on the phone, too much walking around my neighborhood, too much being okay.
So I had two realizations during those two wall hits: I’d had enough. Of what, I wasn’t entirely sure. But I knew that I was exhausted and I felt like I didn’t have enough time and also that I was overwhelmed.
Yes, this is during self-isolation when I have nowhere to go and nowhere (save a handful of scheduled meetings) to be. I had still figured out a way to make myself busy.
So, along with talking about the books I’ve read for the month, I think I’m also going to discuss the progress I’m making towards my goals and reading challenges.
Y’all, I seriously only have two personal goals for this coming year:
1. Deal with my mail as it comes in so it doesn’t pile up and turn into a towering monster that takes me hours to open/sort/deal with at the end of more months than I’m comfortable admitting here.
2. Eat the frog when it comes to grading so I can actually get it done in a timely manner and stop bitching about how much I have done when I’m not doing anything about it.
3. I’m also planning to enter at least one writing contest before the year is out.
4. And to work on my creative writing every day, starting someday this week that isn’t today or yesterday.
5. Oh, and to see Hamilton.
6. Also to eat more vegetables.
Those are my biggies. I also recognize that list has more than two items. But I just wanted you to see my thought process.
Today’s Month of Faves prompt is Best Changes You Made To Tweak This Year #AMonthofFaves – best changes you made or routines you kept that to better organize your day / life; your = morning, evening or daily routines.
I had a hard time with this topic because I cannot think of any little things I’ve done this year since this has been a year of such BIG changes. I moved across the country, I sent my daughter off to college, I sold my house, etc. I mean, it was just a lot.
But if I had to put into words what the tweak I made this year, I would have to say that it has been my willingness to try things out and give them a chance. Things like not having a car or…that’s really all I can think of right now.
I also really did try to keep myself focused on doing things one step at a time. I applied for the job. I went on the interviews. I waited to see what would happen before planning my next move. That is huge for me. Before, I would have already found a place to live BEFORE I even got called for an interview. This time, I waited until I had an in person interview to look at places to live–and that was mostly because I knew I wouldn’t be able to make a special trip to look at housing.
I also learned to ask for help in a really big way, something I wouldn’t have done before, and it really did make my life so much better.
My friend suggested I write about why I chose to use gratitude as my theme for the challenge. “Do a deeper dive,” she said, “and explain why it means so much to you.”
It wasn’t that long ago that I spent most of my time focusing on what I didn’t have or how I wished my life were different. And because I was a student at the school of Oprah, I would suggest people do gratitude journals and such because she said they worked even though I didn’t really know why.
In the past few years, I have learned that gratitude is an important part of my life because, much like acceptance, it keeps me focused on the present and helps me to shift my thinking so that I see all that is good and right around me–even when it feels like everything is going wrong.
Gratitude as I practice it is, in short, keeping the focus on what I do have and what is going right in my life instead of focusing on what’s missing or wrong.
For example, one time I ran over the curb and blew my tire. This was not a good thing that happened. It was inconvenient, I don’t actually know how to change a tire, I knew it would cost money to repair/get a new tire, etc.
However, in that same day, I found a lot to be grateful for:
1. The blowout happened at the grocery store, which worked out perfectly because I had to pee so bad. Soooo bad. Like, I didn’t even care that much that the tire was blown out at first because I had to pee.
2. I bought what I needed from the grocery store and, as I was checking out, the cashier asked how my day was going, and I told her not great because of the blowout. I hadn’t even noticed, but standing in front of me at line were my friend and her husband. “Do you need help?” they asked.
3. My friend’s husband changed my tire. While he was working on it, a guy from a restaurant who ran to the store to get syrup saw my friend’s husband changing the tire and gave him some tool thing that made it easier. (Also, two or three other people asked if he/we needed help.)
4. I, of course, had no money to buy a new tire. I went to Sears and because I had such good credit, I was able to get a store card to put the tires on (all of my tires actually needed to be replaced). Not only were they having a special on the tires, but I was able to get them with 0% interest for 18-24 months.
Now, old me would have bitched about the fact that my tire blew and now I had this new bill. New me was able to see all of the good things that happened to me that day even while I was dealing with something that was a hassle.
Here is another, more personal, example of gratitude working in my life:
I hate Father’s Day. (I also hate Mother’s Day, but for different reasons, but that’s a discussion for a different time.) I mostly hate it because my (step)dad and I did not have the best relationship while I was growing up, and my biological father is an absentee deadbeat. There are other reasons for my dislike of it, but you get the gist.
One particular Father’s Day, I was feeling especially resentful and angry that the day existed. But I had learned to try gratitude as a countermeasure for those feelings. So rather than revel in my rightness at how I was done so wrong by these men, I got out pen and paper and started writing a list of all of the good things my (step)dad had done for me.
After I wrote the list, I felt so much better and I was so much less angry. In fact, I appreciated my dad and all that he had done for me. I acknowledged that he wasn’t perfect, but he also wasn’t all terrible either.
In less than thirty minutes, my whole attitude had changed–and all because I practiced gratitude.
I wasn’t planning to do the A to Z Challenge this year. But ever since the election, things have been rough. The news has been terrible. It feels like the world is falling apart. Or at least that’s how it feels when I watch the news or I’m on Twitter. And that may be so. However, every day, all around me, small miracles are happening if I pay attention to them. And that’s why I chose gratitude as my theme for the challenge. Because I wanted to spend the month of April focusing on all that is good around me to counteract the large scale attention that all that is bad attracts.
For the Blogging from A to Z Challenge this year, my theme is gratitude. Every day, I am going to post about something I am grateful for. Tune in Monday to see what I pick for H.
The Englishist 