Failure and Success

Current Tunes: Cowboys & Panthers (Panteras!) on Monday Night Football

So here’s my synopsis for the day. Here is how today was different.

1.) I said something that needed to be said today. I made the conscious decision to make a calculated, reasoned risk that yielded not the exact result I had envisioned, but indeed a better one. Overall, I felt good about it.

2.) I did laundry. Without specifically needing to. I could have likely gone another week or more without actually doing laundry, but I did.

3.) Not only did I continue my “mini-habits” routine this morning, I worked out for half an hour today. What a horrible half hour. It completely beat me, but I went the whole half hour even though I wanted to quit. A key lesson to remember.

4.) I woke up before the alarm that I set. Before. By an hour and a half. I’m tired now, have been all day (I’m sure working out only added to this). I could have gone back to sleep, but I made myself get up out of bed and the confidence I gained from that can’t be explained in words.

One last thing that made today different was interesting, insightful. I took a few t-shirts of mine (I have many) and set aside a few and cut the sleeves off a few of them, making a few sleeveless t-shirts to wear around the apartment. Sleeveless t’s are one of my greatest loves, something I didn’t discover until a year or so ago. So comfy...

Anyway, I only did this to four shirts. Only four. I could have done it to about ten more; I really only need ten or so real t-shirts for wearing out in public. The thought occurred to me that I mostly don’t want to do it because of my horribly unstoppable conservative streak. I want to conserve and preserve my shirts as they are, I can’t let them change. And for the silliest reasons. “Oh, I can’t cut up that shirt, I had such a good time at that fest,” or “I remember how I got that shirt, changing it would be like changing a memory.” Silly little rationales that fall short of the ideal definitions of fact and law. Maybe after I’m done with this, I’ll do one more.

All this today, and I still have an assignment due tomorrow and no idea what I’m going to turn in. On the surface, it’s not a difficult or complicated assignment at all. It just requires a good amount of creativity and of late I haven’t felt creative at all.

But the problem is bigger than that. I’m ashamed to turn in something for an assignment that I’m not proud of, something that I think is garbage. I think though, that may be something I need to teach myself to do. What ends up happening, I get so nervous and worried (worried is an important word here) about what’s required of me for the class and that I won’t meet the expectations of the teacher. So instead of just simply doing and/or trying, I just say to myself that to not do it at all would be the better choice. Which of course obviously it’s not. I had it really ingrained in me that everything always had to be your best, always. Not “as often as you can,” but always, every single time. I have to accept that there are some things I will not be the best at, that I will fail at. I will have to accept humility and go about life and not let it get the best of me.

My foolish self, I should remember how last quarter I stressed and stressed and worried and worried about my final paper in a class. I churned out a ridiculous, half-ass paper (by my standards anyway) and made I think an 88 on it. Maybe even higher than that. The point is, and J was there listening to me bitch constantly, I defeated myself before I had even started. I might be doing that with this assignment, unfortunately. I can foresee myself justifying the idea of just waking up early in the morning and starting to work on it immediately, AKA procrastination of the most unnecessary kind.

Perhaps all I need to do is accomplish even a small amount of work before I hit the hay tonight. Anything that can be a sign of progress.