Sharing the love

So this wouldn't be much of a project if I focused only on my own shortcomings in the perfection department. Also, I mostly want to talk about other people for a bit to make myself feel better. But I will justify this by pointing out that the idea behind this blog is to write about a shared human experience, so it totally makes sense for me to list the mistakes made by others, right?!?

Ok so with that out of the way, I will recount a couple of conversations from the last few days. The first came about when I called a friend for moral support after feeling bad about miscalculating that deadline last week. It went something like this:

• Me: I can't believe I did that... I mean seriously, what was I thinking?
• Her: Well if it helps, I filed documents today that I realized later weren't signed...
• Me: Go us!

Later the same day, another friend posted a status update that she had arrived at the airport in London, UK to board her flight home to the US only to discover that she was actually booked to fly the day before.

If I had any degree of blogger-savvy-ness, I would insert an amusing photo or gif here that depicted someone slapping their forhead in frustration. But I don't. So I will continue typing.

I started off this post wanting to write about friends' incidents of human error because I haven't actually had any crises in the last few days. This led to, however, my first significant realization of this blog (and it's only post #3! hoorah!): when I stop to think about it, I don't actually screw up all the time; just sometimes! It's actually a very refreshing revelation.

I know, I know, this isn't rocket science. Of course I don't screw up all the time, but you know how it is, right? When you've just committed that unforgivable act of human error, it can feel like you're nothing but a screw-up. Ok I should correct that.. I can feel like I'm nothing but a screw-up. I will try not to speak for others but I think the sentiment is somewhat shared.

The point is that I have now decided I will try and chronicle my small successes in addition to my failures. Maybe they will remind me to keep some perspective.

Here goes....

Ok so with my project proposal out of the way, it's time to dive right in.

But first, a couple of factoids/disclaimers:

1. I'm female, 29 years old, and Canadian (just for some context)
2. I'm a lawyer (hence the fancy world "disclaimer"), and why I am setting this out in list form. Lawyers like lists.
3. I am not posting under my own real name, and when I refer to others, be they partners in fallibility or otherwise, I will not use their real names either.
4. I'm a perfectionist (durr)

The idea for this project came to me this morning in the shower as I continued to dwell mercilessly about the thing I screwed up at work yesterday. How bad did I screw up? In the grand scheme of things, not that badly. Nobody died, and it does not appear that it will even have any lasting consequences in the long run. Essentially I miscalculated a deadline on something - which, in law stuff has the potential to have serious consequences for both the client and the lawyer's professional record. But in this case, the deadline was actually irrelevant for a number of reasons so it didn't actually matter. Nevertheless the whole thing sent me into a near-panicked state for several hours yesterday and kept me up for most of the night. Why? Well the easiest way for me to explain it is that, aside from working in a demanding job that requires near-impossible standards of perfection, I'm also naturally very hard on myself.

I reacted to my stroke of screw-uppedness by immediately messaging/calling other lawyer friends for moral support and advice on what to do. I consider this to have been a really proactive and mature reaction, compared to how I normally deal with screwing up: festering in deep internal self-loathing while keeping up outward appearances. It is exhausting.  So this time, my dear friends kindly empathized, shared their own stories of similar screw-ups and offered kind words of encouragement that it would all work out fine. In other words, exactly what I would have done had the roles been reversed, and in fact what I have done when the roles have been reversed on countless occasions in the past.

Hearing stories about other people's flubberies definitely lifted my spirits. To a point - I still had to fix the situation and deal with my bosses. But turns out they were pretty good about it too. Part of my problem is that I used to work for jerks - the kind of jerks who dwell on your faults for way longer than could be considered reasonable. I no longer work for jerks, but I nevertheless remain somewhat traumatized by that experience to the point where I immediately assume the world has ended whenever I miss a comma.

So my theory is that keeping a chronicle of the things I do wrong will help me keep things in perspective. Because once I put them down in print, it's easy to see how silly it is to get too worked up about it all... remains to see if the theory will pan out.

Launch of the Human Fallibility Project

Welcome, random internet friends! I invite you to embark with me on my new project in which I will strive to investigate the wonderful imperfections that make us all human.

My reason for embarking on this project is purely selfish: I, like so many of you, am a fallible human being. Shocking, right?! But yes, it's true! That was my first big internet confession. My second big internet confession is that I, author of this blog, absolutely positively hate being fallible.

To that end, I propose a simple experiment: attack the problem head on. My theory being that, if the best way to overcome our fears is to face them, I should just put it out there for the world to see (and by world, I of course mean the few, if any, individuals that will happen to stumble across my little corner of the interwebs).

So, let the chronicle of my shortcomings begin! I hope it will be cathartic but also humourous and, of course witty enough to earn me the respect of internet strangers, anonymous commentators and fellow fallible humans alike.