 
 
A Late Start
For more about the #100daysofwriting challenge, check out https://www.tumblr.com/tagged/100daysofwriting to see all the posts for each day. Thanks to https://the-wip-project.tumblr.com for organizing this fascinating challenge!
If you get stumped on what to write, check the https://www.tumblr.com/tagged/100daysofquestions for prompts to help you write.
I’m starting seven days late on this project, according to how the organizers have set this up, so it’s only day one for me. And I guess that’s where I’ll start my reflection.
I am a bit of a perfectionist. It’s the kind of thing that has gotten me into trouble in the past – leading me to start and stop things because I’m not doing it as well as anyone else, or because I can’t keep up with the workload (I have a corollary problem, and that’s my inability to say no sometimes, but that’s another post).
The old me would have looked at this challenge, said “Oh, I’m too late, It’ll be too messy on my dash) and give up on the entire endeavor. Or the opposite would have happened – I’d go back and answer all the question posts up to this day and then be too burned out to continued.
This version of myself will do neither. I’m old enough to know how avoid these perfectionist tendencies. In fact, it’s one of the benefits of getting older – the ability to play tricks with yourself so you don’t fall into destructive habits.
I’m going to start from where I am. On day 7. I’m worrying about today and only today. What gets done gets done. If it doesn’t, I’ll start all over tomorrow and do day 8. I’ll start where I’m standing.
It’s a kindness to yourself to realize that you can’t always be on time, or caught up. Instead of fretting over what you can’t control (I can’t control that I saw this challenge 7 days too late), I am working with what I can control. I can write this post starting at this very moment, so it is exactly what I’m going to do. I’m not procrastinating. I’m not perfectionism-ing (??). I’m just doing. And this is all I can do.
I will try my very best to write here each day for my next 100 days, but sometimes I won’t. I can only do my best. And that’s okay, too.