Striving

'I don't always know what the right thing to do is, my Lord, but I think the fact that I want to please you pleases you'

Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence

If you look for perfection, you'll never be content

Have no fear of perfection - you'll never reach it.

I am careful not to confuse excellence with perfection. Excellence, I can reach for; perfection is God's business

There are a million and one quotes dealing with perfection.  The vast majority of them are like these... more or less don't go for perfection as you can never achieve it.   I think I know why there are so many quotes like this... because far to many people strive for perfection.  I'm one of them.   These quotes are a good example as I was looking for that last one (not to confuse excellence with perfection).  It's a quote from Michael J Fox.  I couldn't remember it exactly so I just spent 20 minutes googling for it.

Yeah... I spent 20 minutes striving to find the prefect quote about not striving for perfection.


I am of two minds on this.  I so desperately want EVERYTHING to be perfect.  The perfect thing.  The perfect friendship.  The prefect familial love.  The perfect partner.  The perfect art.  But at the same time I'm well aware that achieving perfection is impossible.  In fact the very imperfections in everything are what make them interesting.  The problem is that it just doesn't stop me from constantly striving to be perfect and being disappointed (sometimes utterly disappointed) when I don't achieve it.

The most recent example of this is Ginger.  She's a GREAT car.  But she's not half as 'fun' as Fiona.   While I still think I made the right decision in getting her, I still look at Ginger as a disapointment because she's not perfect.  I don't know of a perfect car, and while I try to accept that there's the little boy voice in the back of my head whining that I just didn't look hard or long enough.  Perfection was available... I just didn't strive enough.

In my art it's far easier to accept less than perfection.  Especially when that art is for someone else.  I don't go for MY perfection, I go for THEIR perfection.  Since many people don't strive for that level of perfection, instead striving for good, excelent, or great, I find it pleasing to meet their expectations.  And since beauty is in the eye of the beholder, if they find it perfect (even when I don't), I can feel very satisfied.  But that's art.  And that's for other people.

I still occasionally call myself a photographer even though the last time I took a photograph was about 10 years ago.  That is, the last time I took a photograph for ME.  I took plenty more for work and I still take plenty of snapshots.  But a 'PHOTOGRAPH'?  No... I can't do that any more.  I don't have the equipment that will let me achieve perfection.

Part of me knows that the camera built into my phone takes a high enough quality image that I could take a 'Photograph' with it.  Sure, it has limitations.  But I can work around those and still make art.  But it's not perfect, so whenever I try to make a photograph and reach one of those limitations I immediately throw up my hands in disgust and stop trying.

I find that my life is much like that struggle.  I want what I want.  I try to get what I want.  I am disappointed that I can't get what I want and then stop trying all together.

Diabetes is another new struggle with perfection.  In December my doctor started me on glucophage.  My blood sugars became incredibly reasonable (compared to their previous highs) in a very short period of time.  It was a two fold effect as glucophage itself reduced blood sugar and having the blood sugar lowered makes me want to drink and eat less which also reduces my blood sugar.  Since early January I've been taking daily accuchecks (blood sugar levels).  I take them first thing in the morning so they should be fairly representative of what I ate the previous day.  

But Damnit they're NOT.  Yesterday was a bad carb day for me.  I had my flatbread wraps for lunch and dinner at work, but the tortillas was a hefty 36 grams of sugar each (opposed to 12 grams for my regular flatbread).  I ate them fairly late in the day and followed that up with a big plate of swiss steak (good as there isn't much carbs in it), mashed potatoes (bad), and corn (worse).  I also had two sodas when I got home from work instead of the half that I normally have.  My blood sugar varies betwen 135 and 215.  After a bad day like that, I'd expect to be on the higher end... say 195.

This morning I was 139. One of my lowest accuchecks.

Yesterday's food and this morning's accucheck aren't an isolated event.   This happens fairly often and it's getting me frustrated.  If I can't find out what certain dietary changes are doing for my blood sugar, then how the hell can I find out what to change my diet to?  My nursing brain tells me that this is more of a process... that perfection just doesn't exist in this disease and that it's unreasonable for me to use accuchecks in this way.  Yes, food is the biggest contributor to blood sugar, but overall health, stress, and exercise all affect it too.  Let's face it, overall health and stress are a lot harder to measure on a day to day basis.

But my nursing brain is fighting hard against my perfection desiring brain.  That side of me just wants to throw up my hands and say 'fuck it'.  If I can't get good measurements of my blood sugar as it relates to my diet, then I shouldn't even try to get a better diet.  I should just wait it out, eat what I want and let my doctor manage my disease with more medicine.

This striving effects my relationships.  Not so much family as I don't get to pick them.  But I have few friends.  I met my newest friend in 2006.   I've met plenty of people that more than likely could have been friends since then... but they weren't a good enough match to be a real friend.  If they couldn't be a good friend, then I didn't make any effort to make them a friend at all.  They'd want to hang out?  Why?  We can't be good friends, so why make an effort at all?

And the most intimate of relationships?  Well... I've written about that before.  I wanted to be perfect (or at least a hell of a lot closer than I should ever expect to be) before I got into a relationship.  I don't even look at women that way.   They are just either another person, or an object of lust.  I never look at a woman and think 'Could she be the one?  Could I love her?  Could I be in a relationship with her?'

Even if I WAS looking for an intimate relationship... what 'prefect' criteria would I use?  How would I tear down almost every single woman out there and make them unworthy in my mind?  Too intelligent?  To stupid?  To outgoing?  To shy?  To serious?  To whimsical?  To plain?  To beautiful?  To vain?  To nonchalant?

While I'm being a nurse at work, I don't let perfection get in the way.  I teach (preach?) my patients that you strive to be better and let perfection just happen if it does.  Medicine isn't perfect as there are always side effects and  you have to accept the bad to get the good out of it.  Or even more basic, teaching them that a full 100% recovery from an injury is rare.  That they'll have to accept that they won't be perfect afterwards.

That's not to say that my striving to be perfect doesn't effect me at work.  It just takes it's toll on my career.  I eventually want to 'move up the ladder'.  The next natural step is to become a nursing supervisor.  More money, more responsibility.  But I'll only let myself consider that in the abstract... I'm not nearly good enough as a nurse to be a supervisor of other nurses.

My reasonable brain knows that just isn't the case.  Our newest supervisor has 20+ years experience as a nurse.  She's not really a great supervisor as she doesn't know how to supervise other people.  Another supervisor does a really good job.  She came into nursing later in life, did a few years of hands on nursing and then became a supervisor.  She hasn't practiced hands on nursing for over a decade.  I've been complimented on my supervisor skills before, and have even been told by a couple supervisors at work that I'd be great in their job.  But whenever I try to give it serious thought, I quickly dismiss it.

I'm not nearly perfect enough at my current job to consider moving onto another.  I probably need another three years.  At least.

I spent months looking at phones.  With the basic criteria I set for my next phone I had already narrowed it down to two phones... but I still took the time to eliminate each particular phone.   You know.. the ones that didn't already meet my criteria.

I took weeks looking at smart watches.  At the time there was only one that met my most basic criteria.  But I still looked at all the other ones available.

I'll take an hour to search through netflix and hulu and xfinity OnDemand looking for the perfect movie to watch.   Most often I'll end up not finding a suitable movie and moving on to do something else.

I'll take 10 minutes on the drive to work skipping through song after song after song trying to find the perfect song for that particular moment and that particular mood.  I only have songs that I like on my iPod, but that doesn't stop me from skipping by dozens (hundreds?) of songs a day.

I took weeks to build the perfect computer.  It wasn't even building 'the best' computer... I had to weigh money vs performance vs use.

Each and every morning I take a few minutes to look at my beard in the mirror.  I pick at it and try to comb or style it in some way.  I know that there isn't anything I can currently do with it, and that I look better with it than I do without it.  But it still pisses me off that it's not exactly what I want.  It's too curly.  It's not thick enough.  It has grey in it (which I like), but it isn't in a good pattern.  These are basic things that I cannot change about my beard... but I still take those precious minutes each and every morning to look at it and wish that I could make it perfect.

I can't count how many people I've counseled about perfection.   I've talked them down from their ridiculous search for perfection.  My brother B and his cars.  My brother R and his gun.  My friend A and his career.  My friend E and his search for nonchalant cool (fucking hipster) and wanderlust.  Countless co-workers, fellow students, and colleagues.

But even with all those successes, I can't consider myself good at it since I can't seem to counsel myself about perfection.

I'm just not perfect enough.

If you're reading this and thinking to yourself "What a douchebag... only a moron of extreme proportions could even think that he could reach perfection.  He has problems with his physical body, his self image, his moods, his love life, his intellect, and he still spends all this time looking for perfections?  Why the fuck doesn't he just look for 'good' and then hope to get 'kinda good enough' before even trying to get anywhere near the unobtainable 'perfection'", don't worry about it too much.  I'm thinking that too.  I've been thinking that for decades.  I can't stop it though.