Perfection

Christ tells us that perfection is possible, and that God Himself demands it, but it’s definitely not easy, and it’s not something I want to portray on my blog. I don’t have all the answers, I’m just chronicling my journey to ultimately making myself happier though the use of habits, both spiritual and temporal, the habits which will bring me closer to God and the ones that will allow His peace into my home and will allow me to influence those around me for the good, and not indifferently or worse, poorly.

Yesterday, full disclosure, was a mess. Of course, the day starts the night before. I found a loophole to my new habit of an electronic curfew one hour before bed, by changing my bedtime “temporarily”, because I wanted to stay up and watch a movie on TV. I had planned to watch a new show, and I’d been having TV nights twice a week, Mondays and Wednesdays, and I really didn’t want to give that up when the show was postponed indefinitely. If there hadn’t been anything “good” on, I probably wouldn’t have fallen for this fallacy, but I hadn’t seen “Jumper” in a long time and was always fascinated by the story. So I stayed up until 10:30, thinking that an 11:30 bed time (instead of 9:45) wouldn’t hurt for once. I was wrong, as I learned the next day…

Firstly, I didn’t end up falling asleep at 11:30, but sometime between 2 and 3. When I did get up (late), even though Hubby took Peanut to school, I didn’t even move until probably 8, when I got a shower and planned to take a walk. That didn’t happen. I also planned to eat, but didn’t eat breakfast or lunch… great for my weight loss, TERRIBLE for my actual health. Yes, I know this. I literally was too tired and unmotivated to eat anything and was tempted to skip dinner. No resolutions happened, I even did my morning prayers, something that has become second nature, only halfway before falling back asleep. At the end of the day, the only things I had gotten done was a very short letter to my family and making 2 St. Patrick’s Day cards for my aunts (mailing them today, hopefully just in time). I fell asleep late, didn’t make the bed, didn’t say Rosary, didn’t eat healthy, did do an electronics curfew, but still took a while to fall asleep. Today, while I did sleep in an extra 1/2 hour, I also sat down and looked at everything I needed to get done over the next 2 days for me to feel accomplished this week, but just the bare minimum. I even included how long I would spend on certain projects, included time on my habits, included things like making and eating 3 meals (so far, so good!), and also time on my blog.

Perfectionism is sometimes my downfall, but only in weird ways. For example, I can only start cleaning at 8:30, but if it’s 8:31 I have to wait until 8:45. No, this thankfully isn’t a compulsion, just a loophole in my mind to give myself an excuse to procrastinate. Today, I did start working at exactly 8:25 (I actually have an alarm set for 8:24, no joke, because I want to start my pomodoro app on time, so to speak). But I continued working through the app even when a subsequent start time was 10:06 (I ended up shortening my 5 minute break after this to 3 minutes, so the next start time was 10:35). We can’t allow perfectionism to get in the way of forming good habits, or they wouldn’t ever happen. I could have just thought, “well, I didn’t get the bed made today, what’s the point?” or “I missed writing in my blog 3 days this week, might as well not do it at all”, but if I want to cultivate the habit of making my bed, or writing daily, I need to come back to it, even though it’s almost guaranteed to be harder even after a 1 day break (starting something over tends to be harder than just continuing). So, I hope I haven’t chased away the 6 views I get per post through this week’s unintended break, and I hope I have given, even in falling, inspiration to go and tackle whatever project, habit, or chore you have looming over you!