For most of my life I maintained exactly a 3.2 GPA. The amazing thing about it is that it was my average grade in a small grammar school, a moderately competitive high school and a ridiculously competitive college. I always did just enough work to get a B+.
This is the sort of thing that makes for an excellent executive. If you have limited time, people and budgets you are going to have to triage. You need to decide what will never get done, what will get done very poorly, what will be done adequately and what will be excellent. What really matters. And this was critical to maintaining my sanity when my child got sick. I triaged like crazy.
So yes for a year and a half I showered only every day and a half and wore nothing but yoga pants and got haircuts only every four months. And stuff piled up and I didn’t make any new mom friends. It was hard, but it worked. I recall looking around the occupational therapy waiting room once and noticing that not one mother in there had a manicure, a pedicure or highlights. Not one. In a year of OT I saw one manicure.
It is easy to say that something cannot be done. But it is rarely true. Very often it simply requires difficult, even painful, tradeoffs. Tradeoffs around your career, your home, your lifestyle, your friends, when you will retire, and what your child will learn.
The truth is that I have lived a rather full and complete life without ever becoming adequate at volleyball or softball. I can’t keep a plant alive. I can’t iron a shirt. I have no fashion sense. and made it into my thirties without ever decorating my home which is OK because I am also a terrible housekeeper.
But I am really good at cooking and playing pretend and telling stories.
And this is important because I don’t have infinite energy or patience. So when the time came to help my son we realized that he had to learn to swim. He had to learn to write. He had to learn to have friends. He did not have to learn to play baseball. He did not ever have to be any good on the monkey bars. He never ever needed to go down a two story inflatable slide.
A good life comes from doing a few things extremely well, many things adequately and most things very poorly. I have to go now and enjoy the perfection of my imperfect life.
Now if I could only find my keys…
