As I sit here in a preternaturally quiet house with coffee cup at the ready, I am suddenly at a loss for words. My kids have gone to the other side of the country to visit their dad until Christmas Eve eve, and I have been working non-stop crazy at my 'real' job until just this moment. Well, okay, I did sleep eleven hours in between then, but who's counting?
I'm thinking about all the unfinished hats, caps, baby booties and gloves that have been promised to friends and also the newest order for an 'obnoxiously pink' hat that I have promised by tomorrow. And for which I have yet to buy the yarn, even.
It has been my lifelong practice to over book myself and - to my credit- I generally deliver. But, sometimes I don't. It is these times that make me feel like a failure. When the only thing I'm failing at is realizing that, barring superhuman abilities, nobody could mass produce the items that I have promised in the time frames that I have promised them in. My failure is in my lack of seeing myself as a human being that is governed by the same 24 hours a day as everyone else and no amount of denial is going to turn that into 25, 26 or even 24 1/2.
It's time for me to get real about time and my inability to live outside of it and just own up to the fact that I can please some of the people some of the time, but I can NEVER please myself. This is the plight of the perfectionist.
