The B Student
I’ve always considered myself to be a “generalist.” A jack of all trades, master of none. You know the lingo. I see this quality as my greatest strength and also my greatest weakness. I can be functional at almost anything… The drawback, the darkside, is that stinking master of none part. I live life feeling like I’m doing really OK with most everything, but never quite good enough or awesome even, at much of anything.
Lately, I’ve been leaning a little more heavily on the “I suck” part of the continuum. Prior to this, I developed and acquired a theory about life; that I (and potentially you) cannot possibly be awesome at everything all the time. BUT it’s not impossible to be awesome at one thing and then Ok at a few others and so on. It’s all about priorities. One week I can actually be awesome at doing the laundry, for example, but the dishes suffer a tad. This theory has for the most part helped me feel slightly better about my state of affairs as a mother. Because I can always feel like I rock at something all of the time, even if it’s not everything all of the time.
But these types of rationalizations, that evidently come fairly easy to me, can also bite one in the ass.
It means that sometimes, or actually most of the time I might be doing a not-so-great, half-assed job at most things. For things like laundry, no big deal really, it just means I may or may not be wearing clean underwear.. ok I kid on that, I never let it get that bad… but BUT when it comes to something like, oh I don’t know, being a PARENT or trying to kick ass at work and actually attempt to be an expert at something there are actually PEOPLE that are affected by my B level, generalist effort.
Today was one of those days where I have had to give myself some self-criticism, and one where I’ve received some external criticism as well (totally meant to be helpful and actually was, just fed into the feelings I’m sharing now) and I’m feeling pretty crappy about my effort in the areas affected. No, no one has been harmed by anything I have or haven’t done… I have just come face to face with a few areas I may have let slide down the priority list a little too far.
So I’m re-evaluating a little. Trying to figure out what is actually possible given my limitations of time and resources. But old habits die hard and really I’ve been a B student my whole life. Just ask my parents.
Not to make excuses here, but really how does one get it all done? And well? Or good enough? I feel like every time I try to re-think it, something new gets added to the list and the list just keeps getting longer and longer and longer.
I know I usually talk a good talk about “accepting” one’s limitations, or embracing the chaos, but I’m feeling like right now everyone is doing it better than me.
Sulk. Sulk. Whine. Sulk.
And I’m done.
Off to unload the dishwasher and clean the sticky peas off M’s highchair tray.
Maybe.
((image via))
