Month: March 2021

Hello, my name is Andrea, and I am a recovering perfectionist.

I used to be the student that cried when she got a 98% on a test. I had to make everything look great. Following every rule to the letter was important. My drawers had to be just so.

My parents rarely had to punish me. When I did something wrong, I felt so bad that I punished myself. Their job was calming me down and talking me through the mistake and what I should have done instead.

Then, I had some years in which I was not the only one telling me that I was an awful human being when I made a mistake. The verbal abuse that catalogued everything I had done wrong in the last few weeks and threw it in my face did not help things.

Mind you, I was an obliger of the highest order at this point in my life. There weren’t many things I did wrong. Most of them were small mistakes that should not have come back to haunt me, but the person doling out the verbal abuse needed an outlet and I was the easiest target.

You should have heard the thoughts in my head after that.

So this is where I was as I walked into young adulthood. I felt like I needed to be perfect in order to be seen and heard and loved and understood. You can imagine how that worked out for me. Luckily, I have a good support system and a thick skin.

Then, I went to live in a country where I thought I spoke the language. However, it turns out that taking Spanish in school for a bunch of years gets you close to understanding native speakers, but not at all fluent.

I had to let go of perfect and settle for good enough.

Perfect has come knocking on my door from time to time. I certainly had quite the love affair with perfectionism in the early part of my teaching career.

But, perfectionism has such an ugly side. It can stop you in your tracks. It can fill you with overwhelm and make you give up because you feel that you will never get it done correctly so why do it at all.

I have systematically worked to counteract those thought patterns and get myself into a healthy place.

Enter challenges.

Yes, the 30-day challenge is motivating and it makes me make a commitment to myself. No, I don’t make myself worry about being perfect. Does this mean that I don’t win some prizes? Of course. But it is the only way I have found to still participate and shed some light on something important to me without drowning in overwhelm.

I am in some different challenge groups and I just marvel and get slightly annoyed at all the people asking if something “counts.” Especially in challenges like book challenges where there really aren’t prizes.

So here is my reflection on this Slice of Life challenge: I did not do it perfectly, but I did it. And going from not writing on my blog in at least 3 years to writing on my blog ALMOST every day of the month (28 days) sounds like a win to me.

When I was in Kindergarten, I begged my mom for piano lessons. We had a really amazing player piano in our living room, and I wanted to play music. My mom made me promise that I would take lessons all the way through elementary school. It may seem an odd commitment to get from a young girl, but that was probably the best thing she could have done for yours truly, the people pleaser. I never questioned the obligation that I had to get to piano classes or practice my piano.

Growing up, I lived in a planned subdivision, on a cul-de-sac. My piano teacher lived two houses down, after turning left at the bottom of the circle drive. I walked there by myself every Wednesday at 4pm like clockwork.

Throughout the years I trudged down to that house. Some weeks I sheepishly meandered, dragging my feet along the way, ashamed of my lack of practice time. Some weeks, I galloped and burst into her foyer with enthusiasm and pride, ready to show off my new skills. But every week, no matter the emotions involved, I got there ready to learn.

Sometimes it was a stern lesson, with yet another reminder that I would not get very far without practicing. Others, it was a feverish work time getting me ready to perform at the next recital. And some days we just had fun.

I learned a whole skill set that I took completely for granted. It wasn’t until I was in college in a choir and a director was excited that I could sight read the melody that I realized how awesome that skill was.

Music played such a big role in my life as a kid as I learned to use art as a channel for my emotions. I sang in choirs in high school and college and church. Musical theater was part of my life from childhood through college. I even sang at my cousin’s wedding and my grandma’s funeral.

And then the music stopped.

It wasn’t on purpose. When I went to study abroad, there wasn’t really an opportunity for singing in a choir or at least not an easy opportunity. Then, I met my husband and he just never got to know that music part of me. It is really weird how I let that part of me become dormant.

Fast forward to two weeks ago. My mother is selling her condo and needed to get rid of a bunch of things. So, I jumped at the chance to get her digital piano. (Not quite as cool as the player piano I had growing up, but definitely a great option in my apartment)

We brought that piano into the apartment and my husband has been starting to learn also. I have been sitting down to play music every day and it is such a balm to soothe my frazzled soul.

I absolutely love living near Lake Michigan. Our apartment is right on the lake shore and it is so amazing to see the lake every day.

Living on the edge of a big body of water like this one gives us a spectacular view of the horizon and especially amazing sunrise views (the lake is in the East for us).

One thing I never realized until I saw the lake every day is the incredible array of colors that the waters take on. Some days the lake is one shade of blue, on others it is green or turquoise or brown or some combination of layers of each of these colors. I have never lived in a place that made me stop and take it all in as often as I do here.

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I am so glad we made the decision to move to this apartment last year. As Spring and Summer approach, I am getting excited to go outside more often and enjoy our balcony.

On Monday, April 12th we will need to go to the school building for work. Since last March, my husband and I have been working from home (well, except for over summer break). In the school district where we work, we were able to make remote work plans and work from home during virtual instruction. That is all about to end.

Except for a few days here and there, when I have reported to the school building for special work days, we have put together a pretty great routine. The best part of working from home has been the way that our regular routines, like doing laundry or cooking lunch, have fit so nicely into our work days.

Eating lunch every day together is such a nice part of my day that I am going to really miss. Being able to chat in between classes and during prep times has also been so great. I wonder what we can do to keep some of this feeling of checking in with each other when we are in separate places.

I am not really too worried about going to the school building. Luckily, we both will be fully vaccinated by the time we are back in the building. I think it will be nice to actually meet many of my new colleagues for the first time in person. And, it will be nice to be around kids again. (Even if the plan is crazy riddled with holes and will be crazy to implement well)

What makes me nervous right now are the small details that I need to figure out. After so many days in the routine of working from home, I have my morning routine figured out. Now, I need to start from scratch and figure in travel time. And getting breakfast and lunch ready to take with me. And putting on actual pants and actual shoes.

It was really nice to have a stretch of time in which we could have the luxury of working from home. Now, it’s time to get working on those routines!

Echo de menos a sevilla. Nosotros teníamos planes el verano pasado para ir a visitar a mis suegros en españa. Obviamente con el pandemic en el mundo, no pudimos ir. Ahora no sabemos cuando vamos a poder visitar a sevilla. A mi no me gusta.

Probablemente vamos a ir para la Navidad. Hemos pensando en ir durante el verano, pero la vacuna allí en españa está muy retrasado. Mi suegro que tiene 80 años, finalmente va a poder ir para una cita en dos semanas. A ver cuando va a poder vacunar mi suegra. Nosotros tambíen tenemos miedo de viajar en avión durante tantas horas encerrados, especialmente con los variantes que están por allí.

Estoy pensando en la ciudad también. Sevilla es una ciudad encantadora. Quiero estar allí para pasear y visitar los lugares bonitos y comer la comida deliciosa.

Hasta pronto sevilla mia. Estaré allí lo antes posible.

Received second dose
Twelve hours later it hit me
Slept all day and night

Fatigue and achy
body did not want to move
Chills and night sweats too

Phew! Better today
Fever broke, not so achy
That was fast, thank god.

I did get to do my normal online work day today. Definitely still have fatigue, but I think that is now my autoimmune response to the immune system reaction to the shot. So happy to have the vaccine and to know I will be fully immunized before having to go back to work in the school building on April 12th.

Second dose Monday. Ouch. Chills. Tired.

March is MS Awareness month.

I was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis in September of 2013. It was a really scary and weird set of circumstances that led me to the ER and then to admission into the hospital that Fall, and ultimately to a diagnosis.

For me, the flare up that time was tingling and numb feet and legs. I could not walk straight and ended up in the hospital. Probably I was admitted so that they could take care of the work-up and get a neurologist to look at my case and talk to me.

After diagnosis, I researched and learned all about the disease. In MS, the myelin sheath, which is a protective layer around nerve cells, begins to disintegrate. The absence of this protection causes nerves to act up. This can happen to nerves anywhere in your body, which is why there are so many different symptoms and why it affects each person differently.

I figured out through my research that a few unexplained weird times in my life were probably other flare ups that had happened. Like the few months that I had really weird things happening with my vision and my eyes. I thought it was a weird side effect of some medicine I took. It actually was Optic Neuritis, which might have been triggered by taking that medicine.

Having MS can be scary. You never know what tomorrow will bring. For me, the idea that my cognitive functions might be affected at some point is the scariest. However, I was able to start a medication right away that seems to be working to keep my disease under control.

I have symptoms like fatigue, heat intolerance, digestive issues, sometimes mood swings, sometimes tingling or pain in different parts of my body, but I am usually free from relapses that impede my daily functions. For this I am thankful.

Earlier this month, I started a reading journal. I watched quite a few bullet journaling videos with reading journal set-ups and then I jumped in. I actually am pretty darn proud of some of the doodling I did to set it up. Who knew I could actually draw books and bookshelves so well?

While watching those videos, I ran across a couple people who mentioned the 2021 PopSugar reading challenge. I have seen the challenge in the past, but didn’t really pay attention. My reading usually has a kind of organic flow to it, as I hear about certain books or get recommendations, I add them to my list.

A lot of the timing of my reading in the last couple years has had to do with hold lists at the library. After having to purge hundreds of books when we sold our house, I am perfectly content not accruing another collection.

In an aside, let me just send a little love into the universe for The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo (and her Netflix series). Now, the books that grace my bookshelves are treasures that bring me joy. They are not guilt trips of all the books I meant to be reading or might re-read someday.

But, I digress. This year, I decided, would be a year that I take on a fun challenge and look for books to read according to the categories. I loved making the pages in my reading journal where I am keeping track of the challenge. It is fun to think about which category some of the books I am reading might fall into. But the best part is the Facebook group. I love seeing so many posts about amazing books that people are reading. It sometimes gets annoying to see how literal people are with completing the challenge, but I love the literary discourse there.

Will I finish the challenge this year? Maybe. Do I care if a book that I am reading “counts” for one of the categories? Not so much. Is it a fun experiment that is bringing me joy? Absolutely.

Now, I am off to read. May you find little pleasures that bring you joy in your life!