Aiming for a “B”

I’ve been an overachiever for as long as I can remember (well, except for that one time when I was six that I slacked off on my homework). I want to get an “A+” in all areas of my life, so I stress myself out trying to accomplish all of life’s “assignments” with perfection. But I’ve realized that in my striving for that final grade of A+ with all the associated stress, I’m not actually enjoying the life I’m living. So in order to find more peace, I’ve decided to aim, instead, for a B.

My dietary health, my secondary relationships, my job, my church participation, the cleanliness of my apartment—I’ve been so frustrated in my striving and wishing for perfection, that anything less than perfection feels like failure. But it’s not. A “B” grade, or even a “C”, is still passing. And focusing less attention on those subjects allows me to rock it in the ones that are more interesting, meaningful, or essential to me at the present time, like my marriage, my relationship with God, and my finances.

So here’s to giving up the frenetic need to perform. Here’s to “good enough” on some things to make way for “exceeds expectations” on others. And here’s to enjoying life again. Or maybe for the very first time.

 


 

photo cred: bruce mars, on pexels

Wishing to be someone else

Lately I’ve been putting a little bit more effort into being myself again. I know what you’re thinking: being yourself ought to require no effort. But alas, you’d be wrong. I’m so used to wishing I were like other people that I keep forgetting what I’m like. And I spend way too much mental energy worrying about coming up short in others’ eyes if I don’t love or prioritize the things that they love or prioritize.

I wish I were more interested in politics, and music, and pop culture, and theology. But I’m not. I wish I had more maternal instincts, a knack for cooking, a tolerance for small talk, a more adventuresome spirit. But I don’t. And I’m learning that that’s ok. Other people love those things or have more of those qualities, and that’s wonderful. I have other loves and qualities, and that’s wonderful too.

I want to stop wishing I were someone else and accept me for all that I am and all that I am not. And focus more on the “all that I am” part, the things I actually do love, the things I’m actually good at. I’m pretty good at making people feel known and valued and safe in conversation on my couch with a comforting beverage in hand. That’s a gift I want to make more opportunities for in my life.

It’s ok to focus my energies on the things that pique my interest rather than the things that pique others’ interest.

If you’re learning to validate yourself, too, take a few precautions:

  1. Don’t let your validation of yourself de-value others. Showing interest in another person’s interest can be a form of sacrificial love that helps bolster their sense of being valued.
  2. Remember that we still must contextualize our behavior for our environment. It’s appropriate to adjust how we interact with people at work versus at home (but forcing ourselves to be completely different people in different places is inauthentic and exhausting).
  3. And be careful you don’t focus so much on your own passions that you become self-centered or self-important. Figure out what you’re passionate about, and change the world (or a small portion of the world) with it.

Find yourself, be yourself, and do good while you’re at it.


Photo by Designecologist from Pexels

Sewing pins

My Kind of Feminism

One of my earliest memories associated with feminism was a TV commercial that admonished parents to not buy their daughters tea sets but to buy them chemistry sets instead. It was an attempt at shaking up the status quo, to introduce science to little girls who otherwise wouldn’t have thought to ask for it because it had never been modeled for them, and to broaden the career horizons of many young women. That commercial infuriated my mother.

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Facebook key on keyboard

Lean Facebook

Facebook is a great tool for connecting with far-away friends and acquaintances. It can also lend itself quite easily to superficiality:

  1. voyeurism without connectivity,
  2. exhibitionism, and
  3. a facade of the “newsworthy” things

The latter is usually comprised of the highlights and occasionally a life-altering lowlight that we are essentially asking prayer (or warm thoughts) for, but not much of the mundane in-between. That’s not necessarily a bad thing because

a) most of us don’t want to be inundated with the minutest details of our friends’ lives, and

b) most of us don’t like our “dirty laundry” or that of others to be constantly aired out online.

The issue is, because Facebook is mostly a conglomeration of good times and best moments of hundreds if not thousands of friends on the newsfeed, it can be very easy to believe that one’s own life pales in comparison to everybody else’s.

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Girl reading dictionary

Confessions of a Grammar Nazi

Rarely does the wrong usage of the words “there”, “their”, and “they’re” pass my eye unnoticed. I learned the proper spellings of these homophones (among others) in middle school, and I prided myself on being able to use them correctly. I was genuinely confused that others couldn’t get them straight, and I found camaraderie with other Grammar Nazis who shared my passion for the proper spelling of such commonly used and confused words.

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Note of love

Formerly Fostered: The Search for Healing, Part 4: Helping Others Heal

For context, please see Part 1: Accepting the Angst, Part 2: Examining the Angst, and Part 3: Healing the Angst

From the end of Part 3 (Healing the Angst): I thoroughly believe that my healing journey is meant to help others along in their own journeys, and that as I do, my own healing moves forward, too. So, whether you are a foster kid (former or current) or you love one, I invite you to read and reflect on the following letter (written to my 6-year old self and the 30-something old self that sometimes still needs assurance). I pray if it is relevant, that this letter may serve to help you in your next step forward.

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Couple on retreat

Couples Retreat

A friend of mine once told me that thousands of years ago in Israel, newlywed couples would retreat for a year to get acquainted with one another. They’d be isolated from the people they knew, leaving behind the former ties and making new ones with their spouse, before re-emerging in their society as a couple united in mind and purpose.

I don’t know where she got her information, and whether it was historically true or not, and generally I thought something like that was kinda unnecessary in the day and age (and the type of society) where couples actually do know each other very well before getting hitched. But something about it drew me to the idea because I was in the kind of long-distance relationship that didn’t allow for us to be around each other very much in normal everyday experiences. We talked a lot on Skype, and I was sure that he was the right guy for me, but I knew that sharing a home and a life would be a hard transition for a couple who couldn’t act like a couple most of the time and who essentially turned back into independent people as soon as the computer screens closed or as soon as one of them got back on a plane to go home.

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Crumpled paper

Self-Fulfilling Prophesy

Several months ago I put my car up for sale on Craigslist. I’m on the cautious side when it comes to posting my contact information online, so when I created the listing I decided not to include my name, phone number, or personal email address. Craigslist has a “reply” button which forwards messages to the seller’s personal email account. That would work just fine for me.

Apparently not for my first potential customer. I received an angry email accusing me of leaving out my personal contact information from the ad itself because I was just trying to scam people, that I was not actually planning on selling the car, and that I would not even do him the courtesy of replying to his inquiry. He must have been burned by Craigslist scammers in the past.

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Hidden faces

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator

I love personality profiles. Something about categories helps me feel like less of an anomaly, that there are other people out there who are like me, that I can embrace aspects of myself that are valid personality traits rather than flaws to overcome.

The Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator is my go-to. I know social scientists give it mixed reviews of its science-iness, but I don’t even care, it’s so useful! Since I learned about the MBTI, it has helped me understand myself as well as embrace the differences of my friends, colleagues, roommates, and the guy I married. When bewildered by their ways of thinking, communicating, and decision-making, instead of demonizing them I recognize that it’s just a personality difference. And that is much easier to navigate than a situation in which one or both parties unnecessarily think of the other as the scum of the earth.

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The Introvert’s Way: Living a Quiet Life in a Noisy World, by Sophia Dembling

If you like snarky writing, short chapters, and information about the daily life of a typical introvert, this may be the book for you. I have a handful of books about introversion on my shelf, and this is the one I have the most fun reading. This sounds cliche, but I literally laughed, cried, and/or nodded along in agreement on every page.

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