The List

Of resolutions, of course.

Be kinder--to myself. This encompasses so much. I had a very caring and insightful teacher in high school try to obliquely caution me about the tendency toward perfectionism she apparently noticed in my budding younger self. At the time, I didn't really get it. I thought she was merely passing along information, and, at the time, I didn't get that information is never innocent. I was also a Joyce enthusiast. Go figure. Only with time have I slowly begun to realize what it means to have these leanings, which in many ways are extremely compatible with the whole grad school enterprise. Grad students--and perhaps everyone in academia--are encouraged to be in a constant state of tension. This is also called staying current. The need to show oneself to be of superior intelligence and capacity, even in the very small pond of the department. I also think that perfectionism has a kind of positive connotation. It sounds like a solid, American value at some level. Why wouldn't you strive to be the best? All good things come from something like that, right? Financial success? Personal contentment?

The other side of that, though, is that perfectionism is extremely negative and destructive. It highlights and emphasizes the inevitable deficiencies of all of our lives. And it turns all of that negative energy inward. This is why one of my primary resolutions will be to try to pare back my own tendencies in this direction. Doing so, hopefully, will let me work on forgiving myself for the many many moments in my life when I've fallen so short of the mark. So very short. Apart from apologizing where I'm able, this is the best and most effective strategy--I hope.