i am a slowly recovering perfectionist. i like to pretend that i glory in fucking up. i believe that other people are allowed to make mistakes, learn from them, and try again. i want to believe it is okay for me, too. mostly, it is pretense, but little by little, i allow myself a hall pass to explore and experiment without pressure to do it “right” the first time. sometimes i do stuff “wrong” on purpose to see if my imagined hoopla comes to pass when i do it wrong. usually, nothing happens and no one notices but me.
a phrase from gretchen rubin repeats in my head as a mantra, “…having the courage to be imperfect, authentic and vulnerable.”
years ago, my wife and i began a birthday tradition of choosing a theme for the year. one year we chose fearlessness. another year we claimed courage. we returned to fearlessness again the next year, because we needed more practice and more courage. i blog plenty about being scared all the time. my fears don’t belong to the present. i know i’m gonna be okay today. the fears accumulated in my cells date back from my first sixteen years on this planet. i remind my head that the past is over, but my cells don’t believe my thoughts. this afternoon my head, heart, and cells are flying to california to visit my mother, the scary one i tried to protect and who i’ve spent too long resenting because she didn’t protect me. the phrase repeats mantra-style, “having the courage to be imperfect, authentic, and vulnerable,” as i prepare to let us both fuck up, learn from our mistakes, and try again. when i see my mother in her new home, in her new town, in her new life 1,700 miles from mine, i’m not going to do everything “right,” meaning the way mom wants me to. i will compassionately do what i can that she asks of me. i will accept her as she is, passive-aggressively demanding from me what she never gave to me or herself. i can say no to what isn’t healthy for me. i will do my best to forgivingly love her. 38 hours later, i will get my courageously imperfect, authentic, vulnerable ass on a plane headed back to a place and the people with whom i feel safe.
if you can, if you want to, if you feel like it, please support my efforts by aligning your own courage to be imperfect, authentic, and vulnerable. thank you.
angel joy's musings 
A beautiful, soulful, loving (and very loved) friend recently gave me a book meant to support and inspire. I reread it again today, thinking of her and journey she must take these next few days, missing her before she’s even gone. The underlying message of the book is simple and I say it back to you now:
thank you for believing in me
and please believe me
when i tell you
I Believe in You
i love you. i miss you. i’m sending you courage and laughter and hugs.
angel… i am aligning myself with you in your intention to have the courage to be imperfect, authentic, and vulnerable.
for me this comes at a perfect time as many things are coming to a head right now. i have had the good fortune to get everything i asked for this year, and this is what it looks like…
in january 2010 i was at a job that looked really great on my resume, and that i learned a lot from. that said, it was an incredibly TOXIC place, and it took most of my energy to maintain my own sanity and self-love just by being there. it was clear that it was time to move on, and at that point i had been trying to get out for many months already. i had been praying for either, a new job, or to get fired so that i could collect unemployment and begin to build my own business doing facials.
to make a long story short, i ended up getting unemployment benefits, which have been supporting me wonderfully since then. i learned a lot this summer, and here are just a few of these things… i learned to actually believe that i am good at what i do. i learned to believe that i really do have a lot to offer. i learned to believe that i will be able to maintain a CAN do attitude in any circumstance. i learned that i get a lot of pleasure from creating a safe space for my clients. i learned that i really love to work for myself.
in spite of all i learned about myself the time has come where the long run of unemployment is coming to an end and i still haven’t found a new job. that said, i have several irons in the fire regarding new jobs, i just don’t know if any of them are going to pan out. and i am getting pretty anxious about all of it!
this leads to me having some very unhelpful thoughts, such as… i must have been too lazy this summer, since i don’t have enough private clients yet, to be able to even pay the rent every month. i must have not tried hard enough. i must have been placing a bit too much faith in the “prosperity of the universe” and again, not doing enough to make more happen. i am lazy. i am not doing enough. i am too much of a dreamer. i am not consistent. i have no follow through. i must not be cut out for this life. i am tired of working so hard just to maintain a small sense of peace within myself. i am tired of feeling unsafe in the world. i hate being here. i have a lot going for me (i can see this from a rational perspective) and i still can’t seem to “get it together” what does that say about me??? i feel like giving up.
i wake up every day and it is rare that i don’t have to listen to these thoughts plaguing me over and over again. one of the biggest things for me is the desire to give up. this seems to be a part of my cellular make up, and it comes up every day in response to some hardship or obstacle. contract. pull back. give up.
for me, this habit of contracting and falling into the paralysis of doing nothing is what i consider to be a “fuck up.”
i struggle with the fact that i actually despise myself for this habit. it is hard to love and have compassion for this part of myself. i feel like i don’t deserve love and compassion when i am really IN that contraction.
i do though, and over time i have come to believe that i do deserve love and compassion no matter where i am at. i am writing this to remind myself, and anyone who reads this. we are all worthy of love and compassion, always.
and that it IS WORTH A LOT to have the courage to be imperfect, authentic and vulnerable.
i LOVE reading your blog. you inspire me. THANK YOU ❤
I can relate to this in many many ways. My attempts of living in forgiveness for my mother not protecting me (or protecting herself) was actually calling her yesterday. Though I admit my relief when no one answered the phone and I got to leave a message showing that I cared enough to call, but perhaps not enough to call back.
My conundrum of late, being a student, surrounded by authority figures I respect, is realizing that the praise I am so desperate for is never enough. Even when I’m surprised by their praise, somehow I still think that they are lying and what they really think of me is that I’m silly and stupid little girl who is going to go no where with my silly and stupid ideas.
It’s not that I’m a perfectionist, I don’t demand that I live up to an particular ideal for the sake of the ideal. It that I want to be absolutely sure that I whatever I have to offer the world is of some value. I’m okay with giving imperfection as long is it has some worth to OTHER people.
But I yesterday I realized where alot of this comes from. I was this bright shiny weird kid that burst onto the farming/small town scene and the people around me were like “Ummmm, you don’t fit in.” And so slowly I began to feel shame for who I was. What’s wonderful about that shiny weird kid is that no matter how much i shame I felt, it just kept BURSTING onto the scene. It couldn’t help itself. I think alot of my perfectionism is that shame trying to make that shiny weird kid valuable to the world, and then, perhaps then it will be okay to be a the shiny weird kid. I’m having to learn that that shiny weird kid is valuable, all by it’s self. It doesn’t need to prove it.
Good to see you are loosely observing the 36-hour rule. Damage control.