Of the things that my partner and I have in common, the vast majority of them are nasty behaviours. Spending long evenings watching mindless TV with our favourite chocolate companions, resting on our beliefs that we are right most of the time in the face of disagreement, assuming that the other spouse will confront the growing pile of dishes, you know the usual. Normally our household is kept in some equilibrium where all the unhealthy stuff is accompanied by vegetables, romance, and disinfecting the floor every once in a while.
But there is one quiet and much ignored habit that we share, that in the past few weeks has managed to surface and slap us on the face – that we have a highly inflated sense of what we can accomplish in a working week before we call ourselves “too busy”.
We work in the same industry (youth work/community development) so, while always supportive and respectful of the importance of each other’s job, we can’t hide the fact we compete for who’s got more work to do in one week than the other (mainly to justify why the other partner should pick up the kids from school and day care and do the double drop-off in the morning).
So while in the past month she’s had two training events with young people, three board meetings, and a few other things (I kinda phased out as she was reciting the to-do-list to me), I one-upped her with two Youth Leadership Programs, a conference paper, a Basic Counselling Course and a camp.
Somehow I managed to squeeze in a presentation of my thesis proposal to the review panel last week. The proposal was approved, though they had some fairly large concerns about it. The scope of the project is too large, and I couldn’t really show how the methodologies designed will complement each other. I bit off more than I can chew.
Well d’uh. Don’t we do that every day?
Good news is that it was approved, but I was frustrated that the whole thing wasn’t 100% perfect. Moreover, I was frustrated that my perfectionism had kicked me in the balls.
I went home to find my partner cooking, cleaning, and doing everything that neither of us have time to do any more. She stopped what she was doing and I sat on the couch, and she on my lap. I told her “It was good, not great, but good enough.”
She said, “You’re good enough.”
I told her I was tired (I wanted to tell her “You win – you can manage this life way better than me right now”). She stroked my hair with her arm over my shoulder, and I rested my head underneath her chin. And she gave me rest.
