Thursday, December 6, 2012

Perfectionist

I know it may be hard to believe (especially if you happened to walk into my house right now) but I do have a streak of perfectionism in me!  I have missed out on a lot as a result (drawing, playing pain/violin-anything of the artistic nature) so I try to let go of it to save my sanity.

When I was in college (probably high school too) I would take all my notes in class in pencil.  But that did not look nice enough, so I would always redo them in pen.  It had to look nice, neat and PERFECT.  If I messed up on the third word on the last line, you better believe that I threw that whole paper away and started from the beginning.  I rationalized that I was learning the material as I wrote and rewrote it.  I have to say, anyone that borrowed my notes did not have a problem reading them. (wow computers would have saved me a lot of time..I should have gone to college now and days.)

So how do I transition from expecting perfection from my own notes and handwriting to letting go of my daughters messy and erratic handwriting IT DRIVES ME CRAZY!!!!!! I try really hard to not harp on her and give gentle reminder occasionally...but really I am wondering from where this child came?  Certainly her handwriting did not come from me (or her father for that matter), I just hope that some day she will care enough to write nicely, and if not I will still love her massive amounts!

2 comments:

Chels said...

Blame it on Pappy ;)

Chanel said...

I have horrid handwriting and spelling, and it has gotten worse with age. The crazy thing is that I used to harp on Declan so bad about his. Finally in about 4th grade I decided that it was the teachers job to correct it if she could not read it, not mine trying to make it my ideal. I let it go, and was shocked that the teachers rarely said anything about it and it got better all on its own, without my ceaseless nagging- imagine that! Now his reading requires a microscope because it is so small, but I don't even flinch because if it is good enough for his teachers it works for me. I actually have come to love that handwriting because it is oh so Declan :)