Do Something

I had a lot of time to think about perfectionism yesterday. I was cleaning my house for today's Housing Authority inspection, and I was reminded why I tend to shy away from housework. Once I get started, it consumes me. I have the hardest time just mopping the floors, for instance. I'll see some gunk on the front of a cupboard so I'll clean that off, which will lead me to wipe down the rest of the cupboards, which will draw me around to the door frame, with all its lovely finger prints, which will make me cringe at the dirt in the cracks on the pattern of the door, and when I go to do the back of the door, I'll notice the baseboards behind the door, and next thing you know, I'm on my knees with a toothbrush ...

Mark says I have no balance in my life. I know he's right. It's something I'm working on, and I do think that I'm getting better, but I have quite a ways to go. It's just that I was raised with the motto: A job half done is not done at all. Now, that's great when you're talking about something that has an endpoint: algebra homework or folding a basket of socks. But when you talking about big things--cleaning a house, writing a book--there really is not endpoint. There is always something more than can be done. To me, the need to do the whole job and to do it perfectly has led over the years to a sort of paralysis, an inability to do anything at all.

Yesterday I sat down to write in the early morning hours and was knocked upside the head by the sudden "knowledge" that I'm a fool for thinking I can be a writer, that I'm really just wasting a whole lot of time. It was so tempting to give in to that thought, to just crawl back on my air mattress and go to sleep. But I didn't. "Write something," I told myself. "Anything. Put down a word. Start." And once I got going, I had a really productive writing time.

I have a new motto: DO SOMETHING. If I can only do half the job, then half is still more than nothing. A drop of water may be insignificant in itself, but the bucket of water that puts out the fire is make up of a collection of these "insignificant" drops.

Let's put it this way (using writing as an example, because that is what's closest to my heart): If I write two pages in a day, in a year of five day work weeks (taking a week off for Christmas and another for a Caribbean vacation-- hah!), I'll have 500 pages complete by the end of the year. Five hundred pages, in two page droplets. DO SOMETHING.

I've carried this over into other areas of my life. I have looked at the tragedies that surround us and felt completely powerless to make a difference. Okay, so maybe I can't end world hunger. Maybe I can't do like Bill and Melinda Gates and donate millions to help impoverished children around the world. I CAN donate $10 a months to Sojourners (a Christian organization headed by Jim Wallis, the author of God's Politics, Why the Right is Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It.) Maybe I can't feed the whole community, but I can put a couple of boxes of macaroni and cheese in the donation cart. It's not much, but it's dinner for one family. Doesn't that matter, one meal for one family? DO SOMETHING.

Maybe I can't solve my dear friend's marital problems, but I can drop her an email or send her a card. I can brighten one moment in her day. DO SOMETHING.

Maybe I can't instantly drop the 30 pounds I need to lose, but I can fit in a walk today and trade jam for butter. DO SOMETHING.

Maybe I can't know all I want to know about (Asperger's, heart defects, raising teens, American literature, poetry, Jewish law, fill in the blank), but I can sit down over lunch and read one article. I can learn one thing. At the end of the day, I will still know more than I did when I started. DO SOMETHING.

I get overwhelmed with the need to do it all, do it all NOW, and do it all perfectly. Perfectionism, despite its root word, is so far from ideal. It's crippling. And I'm fighting back. Today my mission is simple: DO SOMETHING.