Veteran readers of SDS.net know that one thing that gets to me stress wise is work. I love my job, I love what I do, what I get to learn, the challenges it presents because I pretty much walked into a field I knew next to nothing about, and the fact that I get to see places because I travel quite a bit for it. When you think about it, my job fits me well; its demands mesh with my being a perfectionist and a workaholic. I often say what I do is the equivalent of being handed only a few puzzles pieces and asked to put the picture together.
Being the perfectionist that I am, I want to do well. I always want to do well, it’s my nature. I don’t do it for recognition [it’s a nice bonus though], acceptance- I do it for me. The only thing I strive for is that my name has resonance and that resonance is the quality of work you can expect from me. To inspire confidence when my name is spoken about my being on the project/handling a task. My former boss put it well when I described that to him: ‘it shows you care.’ And I do. In my opinion, I’m still working towards that goal. My other opinion is that I should be at that point already. Then again, this is me I’m talking about. Things will never be good enough. However I’ve accepted they’ll always be my best at that point in time. And while my nature is such that I’ll see what could have been better and always feel ‘if I knew then what I know now,’ coupled with the ludicrous frame of mind that ‘I should have known that then,’ I think what’s testament to not being the typical perfectionist is that I give myself credit and cut myself slack- that there may have been no way to know things then that I do know without making the mistake that led me to my new knowledge.
From the beginning when I wasn’t certain I belonged at the Slavery doing the work I was to be doing, I had a few goals: 1) Learn. 2) Get back that sense of accomplishment in what I do, a sense of pride of ‘I came. I conquered. That is all.’ To walk away at the end of the day and feel good about what I managed to accomplish and where my projects/tasks stand. Veteran readers know that the frequency with which this happens is hardly ever. Being a perfectionist I am by nature my own worst critic, my own worst enemy come eval time, and the worst person to gauge how I’m doing…because it can be better
Until the day it dawned on me that I taught myself a coding and database language on my own, what held me back was the confidence I needed to say, ‘I can so rawk this.’ From that point on, I couldn’t pinpoint why I couldn’t focus, why I’d forget things, miss obvious mistakes, why I couldn’t power through things that I know I can, because I’ve done it before. For the first time ever, I made a goal that seemed unreachable. I think Little Girl Perfect is will always be a part of me, because the thought made me feel like such a failure. Perfectionists don’t have any love for the word failure let alone the noun. So you can imagine what the idea of failing was doing to me. When I was diagnosed diabetic [but not], making the needed changes helped with my mental faculties..immensely. My focus was back, I wasn’t so fatigued, my frame of mind improved vastly. Reaching the goal of feeling optimal physically was a huge help too, because I felt I was failing that as well. That bothered me simply because I had done it before and I couldn’t understand why I couldn’t do it again.
By nature I don’t like not understanding anything. It’s why my analyze mode as I call it is so honed…I’ve had 20+ years of honing it and understanding myself as a person. I credit it with understanding my perfectionism, my tendencies, how I like things done. Without it, I couldn’t have moved to the point of allowing myself the credit of ‘it’ll never be ‘perfect’ but it’ll always be my best.’ In doing so I took what can be a hindering flaw and used it to empower myself. I still see something and can point out how it can be improved. I’ll always see things in that way. But I have the balancing that is ‘it was the best at that point in time.’
In my work I’ve made improvements. I have a long way to go in my opinion and at the end of the day, that’s the one that matters to me. Possibly the only thing I like about my boss is that he makes good observations about my performance. A lot of what I think needs improving, he’s pointed out could do with continued improvement. I’ve seen and felt myself veering back to where I’d lose my focus. While some of it has to do with this recent regress with being diabetic [but not], the other is all me. This past Friday driving home it dawned on me that I had now been with the Slavery for four years. As I was thinking about that, I invariably started thinking about how well I’ve done in those four years. Naturally I don’t stack up in my opinion, having that line of thought should be no surprise. During this frame of mind it suddenly clicked as to why I find myself having to fight distraction as much and as hard while trying to keep focused on the task at hand. When I think about it, it marries perfectly with my nature.
I move on to something I know. It’s so simple and it makes complete sense. The logic of it all is that I’m wasting time going nowhere, so my inclination is to move onto something I know how to do, or know how to keep progressing when I reach a halting point. It would be all well and good, except what I veer towards is coding. None of my tasks have to do with coding at all [thankfully]. I had to laugh at myself when it clicked for me, seeing it analogous to the defense mechanisms people develop. My nature as a perfectionist and workaholic is to be constantly engaged in doing something and that it’s done well. Tie that in with how I like things done [my OCD -esque tendencies, in this case, efficiently cause there are only 8 hours in a day] and it suddenly wasn’t surprising that my tendency was to keep things moving that I could.
So after four years, it was an underlying feeling of not being able to ask people ‘how is it that we do $thing.’ It’s only been recently that I’ve put aside the complex leftover from Little Girl Perfect about asking a question, despite how it will hit someone’s ears. I often described trying to push through this funk I’ve felt I’ve been in at work as fighting blind, because I couldn’t pin down the cause of it. And just like that, click. On the drive home from work, I had this clarity about the whole thing- both the work funk and another facet of the person I am.
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