“My name is Sarah, and I’m a recovering work-a-holic.” Your appropriate response: “Hi Sarah!” It would also not be a stretch to say that I’m a recovering perfectionist, but the two go hand in hand, and some days I’m not sure how much I truly am in recovery from either of these things.
This week, both of these things got the best of me. For the past four months I’ve been working on an enormous federal grant, which would create tremendous opportunities for our agency and our county. I had the deadline of March 15 marked in my calendar as a day that I would be free of this thing, a day that I could celebrate. I finally finished the grant this week, and submitted it.
I enjoyed two blissful hours before receiving a notification that our agency was not registered in a new database (only mentioned in the FAQs- which I did not read). Long story short, it looks like all of my work is going to go down the tubes, at least until submission next year OR a miracle happens that moves the wheels of government at a quicker pace to get us registered (not likely). I found this out at 5 o’clock on the night that I had been reserving for celebration.
Tears streamed, I yelled, it all went to hell in a hand basket pretty quickly. It’s two days later, and I still feel pretty crummy about the whole thing.
For some time now, Alex (my husband) has been saying, “the next time you have a bad day, we are going to smash a watermelon.” That day seemed as bad as any, so after the tears and the anger, after I had settled into a nauseated and gloomy fog, we made a trip to the grocery store. Alex picked out the biggest melon he could find (which is not very big in the winter, but juicy none the less).
I rolled my car windows down to blast Hendrix’s Purple Haze. It seemed like the right music for that moment. We set the melon up on bricks, and I swung. In watching the video back, it’s a little scary. I got really into it. I didn’t know what rage looked like on me, but I do now. I can’t say it’s my best look.
After a few swings, I started laughing hysterically. The dull ache of this whole snafu is still there, but it will be something I one day laugh about. Until then, I will laugh at the melon smash…and the fact that I left my car windows down that night. It rained.
Like I mentioned at the beginning of this post, I am a “recovering” work-a-holic and perfectionist. While I got up at 6:30 this morning (Saturday) to try and salvage the grant (the old work-a-holic in me), I know that I’ve done the best that I can do. It is out of my hands.
A few years ago, this whole thing would have really put me in a tail spin. Perhaps that’s the beautiful thing about getting older. The older I get, the less seriously I take myself. I admit that I still have a long way to go here, but man, it sure is liberating to have a little perspective. Life is too short, and there is too much suffering in this world for us to imprison ourselves with slave driver expectations.
Be kind to yourself, we all screw up from time to time. As my wise boss told me yesterday morning, “It’s not the end of the world. It will be okay.”
Next time you have a lousy day, don’t take it out on your self or the ones you love, take it out on your favorite melon.
Creative Soul Living 