have always had very high expectations. Of myself, of everyone around me, of my circumstances.  When I was a little girl, I remember crying the whole way to school one time because my ponytail had a few bumps in it--(Sorry about that one, Dad.)  But it has always led me to do my best. Actually, that’s a lie. Sometimes this perfectionism has led me to not do anything. It has also led me to skip piano class if I felt like I didn’t practice enough, clean my house if it couldn’t be totally organized and even declining phone calls of loved ones if I didn’t have the time to have the perfect conversation with them.  

When I realized that August was approaching and I was tweaking the finest details on this site over and over, agonizing over things like file names and sizes, code organization and things that I actually have no clue how to do, it was time to look in the mirror and call myself out on that baloney. Do those things matter? Absolutely.  Are they immediately necessary? Nope. These are all things that can be worked out over time. I was placing expectations on myself that were unrealistic unless I had hired a team of web designers and professional coders, which was not only absurd but completely unkind to myself.

It was time to take a deep breath, trust and press publish.

So I did. And here we are together.

This is your reminder to be nice to yourself.  Maybe you don’t consider yourself a perfectionist, but your friends might pull your leg about some “OCD tendencies”, or you spend a lot of not-so-extra time looking in the mirror, or maybe you haven’t talked to someone in a while because you only had thirty minutes instead of an hour.  Do a favor for me, if you can read a blog post that I wrote in the time my husband grilled our dinner and get this far, then you can also say some nice things about yourself and call your favorite aunt while you’re at it.  

More musings on perfectionism, freedom and hospitality will be coming soon. If you’d like to hear more about that and see more artwork, subscribe below! Feel free to leave your snail-mail address if you’re interested in a printed post card from time to time. Chat soon!

-Andi