(Pandemic Diary - day 309)

From my journal: 1 January 2021 (Friday)

New year, same old me.

That’s not a bad thing. In fact I think it’s the way I want things to be, that I am consistent, that I’m accepting of who I am and where I’m at and what I have, but also that part of “who I am” includes that part of myself that isn’t satisfied, that instead pushes me into continual, ongoing attempts to improve myself. Put that way, “same old me” does not imply that I’m not doing the work to get better, it just tries to remove the idea that there is some need for rebirth or a fresh start or a renewed commitment to change based on the arbitrary turning of a page on the calendar. I’m already working on myself, I’m already working to improve, and there’s no need for a resolution about that.

If you treat every day as the first day of the rest of your life, and if you also treat each day as if it might be your last, then such resolutions are fairly meaningless. Or at least redundant.

Not that it hurts to have a day (like the first day of the new year) where you intentionally examine how things are going, have they’ve gone, and how you’d like them to go. Ideally this would be happening all the time, but in reality it probably doesn’t, at least not in the same way.

So, yes, same old me, and that’s ok, and here’s what that means to me right now…

Consistency

It means that I’ve been consistent in the arenas and in the ways I’ve decided are important, at least at the top level of those things. I’ve run every day, I’ve run at least a ten-miler every week, I’ve run at least 40 miles every week, I’ve made a journal entry every day.

And as a result of that consistency, I ran more miles and wrote more words in 2020 than in any prior year, and I did it without sacrifice (or at least with no perception of sacrifice or any open awareness of it). It wasn’t hard, it was just who I am and what I do. “People like us do things like this” (as Seth Godin says).

It gives me a base, a solid, but perpetually rising base from which to work. It’s not an accomplishment in itself, but it’s the basis for the things I do consider to be accomplishments. And it sets the stage for the accomplishments I want to make going forward. It enables them.

An understanding with my procrastinator and my perfectionist

In my writing, I have that consistent base in place, and I also have some accomplishments that have flowed from that base.

The biggest of those is probably my website. After more than 10 years of deliberation (and hesitation, and procrastination) I finally did it, and did it well. The Rush of it All is out there now. It looks good, it meets my perfectionist standards, and it’s live(!).

It’s not done. But it will never be done. It’s not even remotely “done”, but it’s there, ready and waiting, and there is content (good content, I think) in the chute, and I feel like I am doing it the right way, in accordance with my conscience and characteristics, not in conflict with them.

And yes, my procrastinator and my perfectionist are deeply involved in my processes. But rather than trying to snuff them out (as most of the experts in the field advise), I’m learning to work with them, accommodate them, incorporate them into my process in a way that allows them to contribute to my finished products (while still actually getting to finished products). That’s what I mean when I say I’m doing this in accordance with my conscience and characteristics.

We’ve come to an understanding, me and those little men, those sub-components of me, those inner entities who assert themselves when I try to work.

For a long time, they’ve had the upper hand (I began launching TROIA back in 2009, after all). And for just as long, I’ve been battling them, generally losing, and feeling bad about myself and my efforts because of that.

I had the mistaken idea that they were something to defeat.

Yes, I read the book about procrastination that probably helped me to start seeing that there might be benefits to this disease (meaning that it’s not really a disease, that it’s one of my features rather than a bug), but I don’t think I treated it that way.

And yes, I’ve known for a long time that there are advantages to being perfectionist about things. I realized that “perfectionism is only a handicap if you’re overcommitted” years ago, and it fits with my basic belief that quality is almost always more important than quantity.

But all (at least it seems like all, and I can’t think of any counter-examples) of the books and blogs and everything else I read say otherwise. People who make sense and whose guidance I trust keep saying you just have to ship your stuff. Ship it on a deadline, ship it every day, ship it whether it’s “done” or not, ship it even if it isn’t “perfect” because it will never be “perfect”. There are various versions of that message, but they’re all saying basically the same thing, and they’re all pushing me to publish things before I think they’re ready.

At least that’s how I’ve interpreted them, and even though deep down I knew this wasn’t necessarily right for me, I denied that. Which leads to a long history of haranguing myself, trying to figure out why I can’t get myself to act, why I can’t just publish things in the state they’re in, why I can’t get myself to follow all that really good advice (from people who make sense and whose guidance I trust).

Here’s a thing I’m coming to realize: I’m not a novice, not unexamined or naive. And while it’s always a good idea to accept input from people who make sense and whose guidance I trust, the real person I should trust is me. No one else knows me the way I do. No one else has the same front-row seat to the inspired chaos of my thoughts and motivations and processes. No one else has the same understanding of how things must be and go for me, the necessary conditions and ingredients and sequence of steps that will take me from intention to execution to completion.

In reality, all those inner entities — the child, the artist, the caveman, the procrastinator, the perfectionist — are only constructs. Useful constructs, for sure, but still just a metaphorical way of trying to understand your own psychology. If they are useful, then use them, but when they aren’t, change the construct. Stop looking at a particular aspect of yourself as an enemy. Stop fighting yourself and instead accept the possibility that this might just be the way you are, and the way you’re supposed to be. Work with that.

What does this agreement between me and them look like? What is the accommodation, what’s the deal? How have I changed my constructs and incorporated them into the process in a way that allows that process to work?

Well… I’m not sure.

Maybe it’s just that I’ve decided I might want to give up the fight against them, because it’s a futile fight. It isn’t working, and it’s unlikely it will ever work. So I’ve accepted that it takes me a long time and a lot of angst to get to the point of publication, but that the things I do publish are worth that time and angst, because in the end, they meet my standards.

Or maybe it’s that I’m learning to think in gray about this battle.

It’s not a yes or no question, not a winner-takes-all proposition. Instead, as with almost everything else in the world, it’s shades of gray, movement forward or back along an indistinct array of continuums. In that world, marginal changes create marginal movement on one or more of those continuums. In that world, there is no “perfect”, but there is surely more perfect and less perfect, better or worse. There is no “fast”, but there is faster and slower.

So I don’t have to stop procrastinating to procrastinate less. And I don’t have to give up the pursuit of perfection to ship something that’s good but that could conceivably be better. I can decide what level of perfection is acceptable for a certain situation.

That’s the accommodation.