It Could Be Better.

I think I've shared this story before.

In High School, our choir director always gave the Seniors a parting gift and a little speech, sharing with the class what he appreciated and noticed in those students. My best friend Tina got a stud-finder, because she could always spot the cutest boy in a crowd ;) He said other nice things about her too, don't worry. When my turn came, he gave me a tape measure. He said I was someone he could count on to always be measuring how we were doing and notice where we could improve.

While I knew that to be true about myself, I don't think I'd really noticed how it impacted my day-to-day life. When you are young, your life can be so busy with so many exciting things. You are growing, searching for the next opportunity, and doors for adventure, schooling, relationships are all opening and closing left and right. But as an adult, I find myself with a lot more time (definitely too much time) where I am waiting for something and my thoughts begin to hurl me around and drag me places I don't really want to go.

When I was a dance team captain, this measuring-instinct served me very well. As a track athlete, it was useful to naturally be looking at where I needed to improve and strategize how to make that happen. It was fun! There was always hope at the end of that "I am getting better at this" that made it exciting and worthwhile. Fast-forward to my life now, and the constant measuring and seeing how I could be doing things better can get really old, really fast.

How can I get a better handle on dinners? How can I do a better job keeping up on household chores? How could my Instagram look better? How can my blog be better so that people want to read it? Maybe it's just my content - what better topics can I write about? Discontent with my body and appearance leads me to asking what kind of hairstyle, clothing style, or exercises I can put into the mix to look better. I don't actually want to know all the things I get distracted by that make my life "not as good" as I'd like it to be, but I can't help but see how everything could be improved at least a little bit.

In the workplace, this skill-set is SO helpful. I am that trustworthy employee who will not do things halfway, but I'm cautious enough about coming across as a know-it-all to take my time in making helpful suggestions. But, at home, that skill-set needs a lot of wrangling. And man, I am wrestling with it a lot lately.

Not everything needs to be better in order to be good, to be enjoyable, or to be worthwhile. There are lots of times when "good enough" is good enough for me, but lately I'm struggling to reign in that desire to make everything slightly better. I want to be better in a lot of ways that just don't work with my current responsibilities - I can only be awake so many hours! I know I can always do more, but that feeling of knowing I can do more is putting a pressure on myself that I just don't love.

I want to make this blog better, to be a better writer, to be a better homeschool mom, and have a better body in a lot of shallow ways. In all of this struggle though, I find myself even more frustrated that I don't often have the same desire to be better when it comes to following Christ. Maybe because I know it's hard work. I know it's good work, and that I will never regret it, but it's just another sacrifice to live more for Him than for myself, and making myself a priority often sounds like a lot more fun.

I'm still in the middle of this, just trying to get some thoughts off my chest, log my 500 words (I'm well over that now), and be a bit more transparent about what I'm walking through. Nothing crazy, nothing pivotal, just an internal struggle that crops up from time to time. I am sure hoping it's not just me!

What about you? Have you got an internal thing going on lately that you are putting off dealing with? Something to need to face that just sounds more like torture than progress? It's not just you girl. Keep at it.