Erin's Book

[chochiyo_sama]

One of my girls--who just had her one year of sobriety (clean of drugs and alcohol) just before school let out--left a book in my room.  Me and books, you know?  I picked it up and started to read it.  It's a book of meditations.  It's supposed to be read at night just before you go to bed, and there is a meditation for each day.

Well, once again...me....

I just pick it up and randomly read through the entries.  This morning I picked it up--neither of my forums is especially active  today, nor have many of my friends made new posts for me to reply to, and I SHOULD be in school already, since I can't go tomorrow and the room is a wreck.

Anyway, for something different, I read today's entry, and the first sentence jumped out at me:  "Progress, not perfection," is all the Program asks of us.  PROGRESS, not Perfection.  Man, is THAT a lesson I need to learn.

I am perpetually in despair because things are not "right"--meaning:  They are not PERFECT.  I don't know when I became a slave to perfection.  It seems that I have been struggling with it my entire life.  I really believe I was infected with it in my earliest childhood.  My constant struggle is that I am either PERFECT--or utterly NOT SO.  My house is either SPOTLESS or a place of havoc and disaster.  Likewise my nutritional program, my car, my writing, my friendships.  Everything.

I have to find a way to EMBRACE the concept of PROGRESS over perfection.  Too bad there is not a 12 step program for perfectionists.

Heh heh.

So, I'm going to get myself dressed and head out to school to make some PROGRESS.  

Aloha.