Is There Such a Thing as a Half-Assed Perfectionist?

Today wasn't such a good day. I had a meltdown in front of my boss. The trigger wasn't a monumental crisis. Just one more little stress, one more tiny failure, the white noise in my head turned up just one decibel, and suddenly, out of nowhere--tears.

It's been important to me from the day I started to shine brilliantly in this position, lowly though it is. Even though I've failed at the one thing I've always thought I do well, the one thing that comes naturally to me, it was imperative that I proved to my bosses that even if I was the second-runner up for the position, I was the one who deserved it all along. I wanted to show them that I was actually the more qualified candidate. At the very least, I just didn't want them to regret hiring me at all because I suck.

Well--

I suck.

I've lost count of the number of scheduling mishaps I've engineered. Yes, I really count them. I keep separate counts for scheduling fiascos and billing catasrophies. And yet another list for how many times I freeze during the day because I don't know the answer to someone's question. According to the scoreboard, the visiting team isn't just losing, they're having their asses handed to them.

I try. I really, really do. I don't think I've had to work so hard at anything in my life. It's just an office job, and it's not like the patients are putting their health in my hands. Each component of the job isn't terribly difficult in and of itself, but having to perform all of them at once is impossible.

And yet I like the gig. This is a vast improvement over every other job I've ever held. It occupies my mind and I get to be around goodhearted people who share my values. But I've been away from the working world for two years, and as I explained to someone the other day, it's like reintroducing a feral child back into civilization. My metaphorical hair is overgrown and matted, and if I can't get my point across with grunting, hissing and foot-stomping, we won't be having a conversation. I am that far gone, and finding that it's a long way back.

However, my sense of smell has grown very acute. Metaphorically speaking, of course.

Maybe I should relax my expectations. I have two days off to recoup, and to summon all the gratitude I can find for even having a job I perform crappily.

So what if I'm a failed writer, and a shitty receptionist and appear to have perfectly normal physiology--from a distance.

I'm still smarter than President Bush.