Mama Learns to Home School

Truly, I am the master of starting new things. No project seems too big or impossible when that new relationship energy hits my brain’s latest rabbit trail. With this energy, I can learn almost master level details within just a few weeks (or at least that’s how confident I feel after all my research).

When the supplies start coming in and I feel absolutely ready to implement all these cool new skills I have acquired, a problem starts to sneak in around the edges. It’s a fog machine running offstage. Unnoticeable at first, but building and building, it eventually obscures my vision and I have lost any sense of where I was just standing. Often, it happens something like this.

The kids are off playing peacefully for a minute. Yes! I celebrate inside that I have a few minutes to jump into this passion project. Quietly I open the box, and pull out a few things. There’s a little crying far away. No, no, no, they are okay, right? I can do this. They will settle their own disagreements, right? But the crying intensifies. Man, okay, I will run up and settle this issue then come right back. Oh gosh, there’s a big mess. No, no, no, I will clean it later. “Guys! Mama is trying to do something. Please be nice to each other, okay? If you can’t get along, you can go to your room and play by yourself. Got it? Okay, thank you!”

I run back downstairs, feeling victorious that I didn’t let myself get off track. But if feels different now, somehow. Why doesn’t it feel as exciting now? Where’s the satisfaction I was sure was at my fingertips?

And here comes the fog. The fog of perfectionism.

Perfectionism is often seen as just a character trait that some people are born with. Maybe we call it Type A. Sometimes we call it high achieving. Most often we call it attention to detail (hello, all job descriptions).

But for some of us, well, for me, I should say, it’s a terrible curse.

If I can’t do it perfectly, I truly don’t want to do it at all. If it’s not perfect, and I mean absolutely perfect, I will not be proud of it. And if I am not proud of it, I will not enjoy doing it.

Where did I make that association? Perfection > Pride > Enjoyment.

As for me, the perfection doesn’t just apply to the end project. It also applies to the creation of the thing. I want to sit in silence, or perhaps with my perfect music or podcast selection in my headphones, and create a perfect thing from beginning to end in perfect happiness for all the moments in between.

Oh the mowers are here today? No, no, no, can’t do any writing. The baby wants to sit in my lap and build blocks on the table while I’m at my laptop? Oh gosh, where did my motivation just disappear to?

Lots of incredibly smart people have studied these ideas and summarized this compilation of feelings as Imposter Syndrome. It manifests different ways but, at the root of it all, “people with imposter syndrome feel like frauds even though there is abundant evidence of their success (Imposter Syndrome, 2024).”

“Imposter syndrome (IS) is a behavioral health phenomenon described as self-doubt of intellect, skills, or accomplishments among high-achieving individuals. These individuals cannot internalize their success and subsequently experience pervasive feelings of self-doubt, anxiety, depression, and/or apprehension of being exposed as a fraud in their work, despite verifiable and objective evidence of their successfulness (Huecker et al., 2023).”

My default response to these feelings is procrastination. I always think (mind you this is on autopilot, the thoughts are not something I am aware of in the moment) that I just need to wait until conditions improve. My brain never seems to learn that conditions are not going to change.

That sounds pessimistic. I don’t mean to be nihilistic or catastrophize. But, at my house and in my season of life, conditions are truly not going to change for a very, very long time. I am a mom, I have three kids that need me, and I will never, ever leave them. So my conditions are a set feature. I can maneuver them a little with baby sitters and MDO but overall, I will not be getting large swaths of time where my conditions are peaceful and perfect.

So where does that leave me? It leaves me with a lot of unfinished projects. Those projects (and the aforementioned impostor syndrome) whisper to me “See all that? Don’t forget, you did that. You didn’t finish it. When are you going to get to it? Probably never!”

It also leaves me with a brain that needs a lot of reassurance that everything is okay. I have to remind myself that sun will still rise tomorrow if I do not meet the imaginary deadline that only I set for myself. It’s okay to start and stop things when it feels right. I can do things imperfectly and they still have value. I am who I am (for me, I get this certainty from scripture).

This is where the mental work takes place. I jump in again and again with whatever brings me joy at the moment. I do not stop jumping in even though I know it will be imperfect. Because I naturally lean toward perfectionism, the starting and stopping will continue to happen, and that in itself is imperfect. Can I live with this imperfect version of myself? Yes, yes I can.