they say no one is perfect, and that should soothe us.
yet, in everything i do, i have that perfection in mind. when it seems it may be intangible, i find myself giving up altogether.
i’m constantly bombarded with people telling me to not care what others think. and i don’t. not really. everyone cares to some extent, but it’s not others i’m trying to impress. it’s myself.
my expectations for everyone in my life are high. my expectations for myself are even higher. why? if i’m going to hold everyone else to those standards, i need to make sure i match up and lead by example.
maybe i’ve fallen into the new cliche of the former gifted student, destined to do great things but instead beaten down by the pressure of it all and long bursts of depression and anxiety. i had hope in the beginning, as many of us do, but the failures began to flood in and i felt unprepared to stop them. whether by circumstance or my own self-sabotaging, i became what i always feared: stagnant.
inspiration is easy to find, but near impossible to hold on to. a cloudless, cool morning walk can inspire me to start a workout routine, find a new job, or cook a new recipe. as soon as it appears, it is beaten down by my own expectations and perfectionism.
so how do we keep going in the midst of constant failure? how do i meet the expectations i set for myself? maybe i’ll never meet them. maybe i need to learn to adjust my expectations for ones more realistic.
they say shoot for the moon and you’ll land amongst the stars. but i do not want to land in the stars, i want to land on the moon.
