Part of my personal development is to just put my emotions aside and get things done, outside of my perfectionistic nature, which is very unproductive, being that I don’t start until I have an idea of what the perfect outcome is, and once I’ve started, not feeling complete until it has been done in the exact way I had envisioned it. This has led to a handful of mostly finished projects that I’ve started at work, at home, inside my own mind. Things that are functionally complete, but that still have wrinkles to iron out. I get this narrative in my head that I shouldn’t have to be the one to put the final bow on my projects, that I’ve done all the leg work, and that the small incidentals or the final detail work can be farmed off to someone else. The problem with this is that I don’t trust anyone to finish off these tasks, and then it just lays dormant, mostly done…but not actually done. So now, my emotions come back into it. A feeling of inadequacy, that I might as well have never started, because it’s not finished and now I don’t have the energy (or motivation) to finish it.
“Why do you even bother?” “It’s never going to be good enough” “You’re never going to be good enough”
Ugh. Thanks, brain. The Idealist in me is not very kind, and the Dreamer in me is very good at articulating the Idealist’s concerns in the most devastating ways. So I just kinda…emotionally check out. I play video games. Or I eat junk food to numb myself. Or I just sleep the day away, excusing myself because I’m “overwhelmed”.
I give myself so much grief, and so little patience. “I should already have the emotional endurance or control to handle this shit.” In reality, I don’t. I push myself to my limit, and refuse to slow down until it’s impossible not to. I need balance. I need to keep my health at the forefront. I need to remember that my energy is as much of a resource as everything else in my projects are, and I can’t trade rest for caffeine. I can’t sacrifice my health for anything. Burnout is dangerous, and is unacceptable.
I need to pace myself. There is no timeline for my personal improvement. No deadline to my growth.