I wasn’t born a perfectionist. No, I learned it somewhere along the way. I’m pretty sure I know when it started. My family was turned upside down when I was about 10 years old. My mom had corrective surgery on her back and came out paralyzed from the chest down. It sent our lives into complete chaos. My mom was learning how to live without the use of her legs. We were learning how to live without the mom we had always known. The one who was there when we came home from school, now at a rehab center learning how to use a wheelchair. The one that cleaned the house and made our dinners, now not able to reach the sink or stove. Now we came home to an empty house, relied on neighbors for dinners, friends to clean the house. I was the oldest, so I had to learn how look out for my sister, cook, and clean. My dad still had to work while all this was happening, so the house became cluttered and cleaning it was an uphill battle, but I still tried. Thinking if I could just get some order to this house, I could get some order in our lives.
Finally things settled down and we got used to our new life. We built a handicapped accessible house. That sense of wanting to get some order in my life stayed with me however, and it grew. One summer after my freshman year of high school I decided my life would be a lot better if I lost weight. I was overweight and did need to lose weight and I was successful. I lost 50 pounds in about 7 months. That’s when I started to really control my eating. I would eat the same thing day in and day out, oatmeal for breakfast, apple and yogurt for lunch, plain chicken breast and veggies for dinner. It was very boring and I never let myself indulge. If I did indulge, I would exercise like crazy to burn it off. As I’m typing this, it’s sounding a lot like an eating disorder, isn’t it? But it wasn’t, I never got dangerously thin. I was always a healthy weight, but the power I got from controlling my weight and eating was intoxicating.
Soon the perfectionism travelled to my studies and I started to get straight A’s. If I could control my weight I could surely control my grades too. I was becoming a perfect person. Perfect body, perfect grades. But why? I didn’t know then, but I know now that it was so I had control over my life. It certainly had nothing to do with happiness, because I was not happy. This lasted through high school and college. Then it started to unravel. Thankfully.
There are several points in my life that have been keys to my learning how not to be perfect. The first was meeting my husband. He taught me how to loosen up a little. I started focusing less on school and working out and more on actually enjoying life. Our time was spent trying to avoid roommates and homework so we could go make out and dream about our future together. My future didn’t involve being skinny and perfect, it just involved being with him. My grades started to drop and guess what? I survived. I got my first C in a class and I still graduated with distinction.
I started easing up on perfectionism even more when I was diagnosed with cancer. When that happens, you really just have to let go and put yourself in the doctors’ hands. It actually felt nice to not be the one to worry for once. One of my doctors even told me to let them do all the worrying. You can’t believe how good that felt to hear. Having five surgeries in 6 years meant that I wasn’t able to keep up with my exercising and I did gain some weight back and guess what? I survived. I’m not skinny anymore, but it’s ok. Now I feel healthy, like I’m being nice to my body, not abusing it, trying to fit it into some stereotype. Now I’m just me. I REALLY enjoy food now, but have kept the sensibilities of moderation and nutrition that I learned in my perfectionist days. I exercise now for health and energy, not just to maintain my weight.
Changing careers has also had a big impact on me. Going from a job where I twiddled my thumbs in front of a computer, to one where I’m dashing about with too much to do in not enough time has taught me that sometimes it’s just “good enough.” It’s not perfect, but it’ll do.
I still struggle everyday with my perfectionist tendencies. I do like order and tidiness since I found that it helps me be more efficient, but there is a limit now. Sometimes the house only gets cleaned once a month and we have piles of bills and papers on the kitchen counter and I live with it. Sometimes I don’t get everything done at work or I make mistakes and I live with it. And guess what? I’m happy. I’m happy to say, “I’m not perfect!”
The internet is an interesting place. You can show only your good side. You can show your mean side. You can even make up a completely different personality. You can be one person on one site and another person on another site. You can choose what you put out there. My life hasn’t been all peaches and cream. I can be bitter and angry, sometimes snarky. It’s a part of who I am and sometimes I show it. It’s tempting to only show my good side and be all nice, but I’m not all nice. Sometimes I say stupid things and the introverted perfectionist in me has a really hard time letting it go, but I'm learning.
It’s really tempting for me to only post my “perfect” photos and leave out the ones I’m less than thrilled with. I decided that I would put them out there anyways, just as a way to say that I’m not perfect and I’m not pretending to be. For instance, I wanted to delete this photo of Slow Cooker Chicken Stroganoff, but I decided not to. It shows who I was at the time I took it - someone who hadn’t wielded a camera in a creative way in years. Look how far I’ve come.
Finally things settled down and we got used to our new life. We built a handicapped accessible house. That sense of wanting to get some order in my life stayed with me however, and it grew. One summer after my freshman year of high school I decided my life would be a lot better if I lost weight. I was overweight and did need to lose weight and I was successful. I lost 50 pounds in about 7 months. That’s when I started to really control my eating. I would eat the same thing day in and day out, oatmeal for breakfast, apple and yogurt for lunch, plain chicken breast and veggies for dinner. It was very boring and I never let myself indulge. If I did indulge, I would exercise like crazy to burn it off. As I’m typing this, it’s sounding a lot like an eating disorder, isn’t it? But it wasn’t, I never got dangerously thin. I was always a healthy weight, but the power I got from controlling my weight and eating was intoxicating.
Soon the perfectionism travelled to my studies and I started to get straight A’s. If I could control my weight I could surely control my grades too. I was becoming a perfect person. Perfect body, perfect grades. But why? I didn’t know then, but I know now that it was so I had control over my life. It certainly had nothing to do with happiness, because I was not happy. This lasted through high school and college. Then it started to unravel. Thankfully.
There are several points in my life that have been keys to my learning how not to be perfect. The first was meeting my husband. He taught me how to loosen up a little. I started focusing less on school and working out and more on actually enjoying life. Our time was spent trying to avoid roommates and homework so we could go make out and dream about our future together. My future didn’t involve being skinny and perfect, it just involved being with him. My grades started to drop and guess what? I survived. I got my first C in a class and I still graduated with distinction.
I started easing up on perfectionism even more when I was diagnosed with cancer. When that happens, you really just have to let go and put yourself in the doctors’ hands. It actually felt nice to not be the one to worry for once. One of my doctors even told me to let them do all the worrying. You can’t believe how good that felt to hear. Having five surgeries in 6 years meant that I wasn’t able to keep up with my exercising and I did gain some weight back and guess what? I survived. I’m not skinny anymore, but it’s ok. Now I feel healthy, like I’m being nice to my body, not abusing it, trying to fit it into some stereotype. Now I’m just me. I REALLY enjoy food now, but have kept the sensibilities of moderation and nutrition that I learned in my perfectionist days. I exercise now for health and energy, not just to maintain my weight.
Changing careers has also had a big impact on me. Going from a job where I twiddled my thumbs in front of a computer, to one where I’m dashing about with too much to do in not enough time has taught me that sometimes it’s just “good enough.” It’s not perfect, but it’ll do.
I still struggle everyday with my perfectionist tendencies. I do like order and tidiness since I found that it helps me be more efficient, but there is a limit now. Sometimes the house only gets cleaned once a month and we have piles of bills and papers on the kitchen counter and I live with it. Sometimes I don’t get everything done at work or I make mistakes and I live with it. And guess what? I’m happy. I’m happy to say, “I’m not perfect!”
The internet is an interesting place. You can show only your good side. You can show your mean side. You can even make up a completely different personality. You can be one person on one site and another person on another site. You can choose what you put out there. My life hasn’t been all peaches and cream. I can be bitter and angry, sometimes snarky. It’s a part of who I am and sometimes I show it. It’s tempting to only show my good side and be all nice, but I’m not all nice. Sometimes I say stupid things and the introverted perfectionist in me has a really hard time letting it go, but I'm learning.
It’s really tempting for me to only post my “perfect” photos and leave out the ones I’m less than thrilled with. I decided that I would put them out there anyways, just as a way to say that I’m not perfect and I’m not pretending to be. For instance, I wanted to delete this photo of Slow Cooker Chicken Stroganoff, but I decided not to. It shows who I was at the time I took it - someone who hadn’t wielded a camera in a creative way in years. Look how far I’ve come.
Original photo of chicken stroganoff
A much better photo of Chicken StroganoffSometimes the food, the lighting, the angle, I don’t know – even the air, come together serendipitously and create the most beautiful picture. One that I’m really proud of. Other times I just can’t get it right. I have a picture in my mind how it’s going to be, but it just doesn’t translate through the camera. Sometimes I’m tired and grumpy and I say, “Here, I made the friggin’ dish, now here’s a friggin’ picture.” Sometimes I’m just not inspired and I have no idea how to take a picture of a dish. Sometimes the food is just plain ugly. Either way, I put it out there. It’s just me. I’m a cook, I’m a photographer, but I'm not perfect.
Ick, I should have taken this one in natural light, but guess what? There is no natural light at night!
Serendipity
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