Achievement Porn

I am currently halfway through week #2 of my staycation and feel like I’m kind of observing COVID-19 running rampant through Colorado. I’m “safe” at home, but I feel like I should be doing more. The thing is though, even if we weren’t in the midst of a pandemic, I would still feel like I should be doing more. When I don’t have a crisis I believe I should be managing, I should at least be doing more to promote my business or become a “better” counselor somehow. With the rise of web content, nobody is short on reminders of what a better, more perfect life looks like.

My favorite guilty pleasure on YouTube is makeup tutorials. I’m particularly fond of Tati. Most of the time, it’s harmless to sit back in my sweatpants, clean face, hunched over the laptop with all my chins flopping in the screen light, but on my more self-critical days, I look around and realize that I’m not wearing anything close to Tati’s fresh out of Nordstrom outfit. I rarely even put on tinted moisturizer when I leave the apartment, and with the pandemic, I’m lucky if I even mix prints appropriately. If it’s clean, I wear it. Simple. Still, when I see someone’s perfectly manicured filming corner and their filming-ready look, it’s hard not to find myself lacking.

Plus, it doesn’t stop at the outfits or the makeup, does it? We have the Instagram posts showing lovely interior decorating with lots of (miraculously stain-free) white throw pillows. Many of the throw pillows also are made of some high pile covering that make you wonder, “How are they not just pilling all over the place?” “How has the dog not eaten them?”

This all leads to questions about dog parenting skills and general adequacy as an adult woman trying to keep her home.

Now, I realize this is a very single female perspective. I don’t have first-hand knowledge of what men experience, but of course we see mixed messages and expectations there too. The ideal man is supposed to love babies, earn a good living, keep a clean car, get along with everyone, but be tough when he needs to be. He also needs to be right because if he’s not, people just will walk all over him, and he’s worthless.

Nobody is that “together” all the time. I don’t think anyone is that “together” most of the time. Life is unpredictable. The only alternative to being willing to accept a certain amount of messiness in your life is to just go bonkers because we just don’t have that much control.

In my free time these past couple of weeks, I’ve managed to make it through one novel and into a self-help book I’ve been meaning to get to for months: Hiding in The Bathroom: An Introvert’s Guide to Getting Out There (When You’d Rather Stay Home.) Being a female entrepreneur who is also an introvert and who has always worked in a people-centered profession has made this book just mind-blowing for me. I realize that the stereotype most of us associate with introverts is this hermit-like being that hates other people, and for me, I can be hermit-like, but I love people. In fact, I’ve been jumping on as many calls as I can throughout the lockdown period here in Denver. I also actually strongly prefer seeing clients in-person versus via video chat (kind of surprising, actually.) However, I need my recharge periods. Anyway, Morra Aarons-Mele says so much so well, I don’t feel right even attempting to paraphrase her work here, but wow do I wish my bosses had read this when I was working those first jobs in my twenties.

Based on the conversations I’ve been having with prospective clients as well as colleagues, there seems to be a general sense of inadequacy. Everyone feels like they’re somehow coming up short in this situation. They should be doing more. They should be concentrating harder. They should be cleaning more. They should be enjoying the time more. They shouldn’t be enjoying this time as much as they are. Whatever they’re doing, it’s wrong and there must be a right way to do it. Maybe though, one thing, one very important thing, hasn’t changed just because we have a pandemic. Maybe good enough is what we need to continue to work toward. Like author Miguel Ruiz observed in The Four Agreements, we need to commit to doing our best, and our personal best is going to vary depending on the circumstances. That’s how it is. It’s fine.

One of the most frustrating yet liberating things anyone ever asked me was the boss at my first real job. He asked, “Are you a perfectionist?” I never thought of myself as a perfectionist because I believed I messed things up all the time. I didn’t mean to, but I noticed my mistakes a lot more than I noticed the things I did well. Of course, after I got home, yelled at my then-boyfriend, and took a hot bath, I realized that of course I was/am a perfectionist. If I do something that doesn’t meet my standards, it ruins my day. I’m a lot better about it than I used to be. No, I really mean it. Coming from a recovering perfectionist that probably sounds suspect, but the thing is, I can do things well enough now. I can set priorities. Also, if I make a mistake, I can learn from it instead of just giving up and abandoning projects or new things as impossible.

I’m just letting you know that it’s okay to be a closet perfectionist. It’s okay to even be an “out there” perfectionist, and you know what? You can work with someone to find a way to let some of that go. Wouldn’t it be nice to be seen? Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to really appreciate and celebrate your achievements without thinking about just pulling yourself up to the next rung on the ladder?

I see you, closet perfectionist. You can’t hide and it’s okay to be you. It’s also okay to let go of that a little bit. As John Steinbeck wrote in East of Eden, “And now that you don’t have to be perfect, you can be good.”