Improvement vs. Perfectionn

Yay for some good news Friday! We finally got to the SS office yesterday to officially change my last name! Yay! Their hours are ridiculous- they are only open for 27 hours a week! And on Wednesdays they close at noon! I wouldn't mind to have their work hours!!

But anyway.  Something that I have been reminding myself lately is "aim for improvement, not perfection!"

In our society, we're so worried about being perfect that anything less is just not right at all!  We have to have perfect houses, perfectly behaved/dressed children, perfect jobs, and most importantly, perfect hair.

Note the perfect hair and perfect posture and I stare at the water!

I'm also a perfectionist- it kills me when I get anything less than an A on school assignments (even A-, those things suck too!) Messes drive me crazy, and when I do something wrong at work or in class I feel horrible about it for days. Even if I didn't know not to do whatever I did.

And lately, I've even been expecting perfection out of those around me. Sometimes myself, too, but I realized I'm a lot more relaxed about something if it's me, not someone else.

It's kind of like this: When I went to the doctor, she said I needed to take certain medicines every day for like a week or so.  And if I wasn't starting to feel better within 4-5 days, I needed to go back.  The medicine she prescribed me didn't just magically make me 100% perfect again that first day.  It definitely helped a lot, but every day that I continue to do what she said, I get better.  I would say I'm now at a solid 92%.

It would be unfair of me to expect that first dose of medicine to make me completely better again, just like it would be unfair to expect constant perfection of myself or anyone else.

There are some cases in which it is ok to expect perfection- finding a wedding dress! Making new cars! Heart surgery! But hopefully, those aren't things we are doing in everyday life. (If you're buying a wedding dress every day, you may need to rethink your priorities!)

Besides, you'll never find a wedding dress as perfect as mine

But something I'm going to work on is to make sure I'm improving.  B and I recently had a discussion (it was going to be for a blog post actually, until I decided I wanted to do something different) about some of our goals for our future.  They included things about finances, schooling, our relationship, you name it.

And we understand that as hard as it may be, we can't just magically start at the perfect life.  We have to work our way up to it.  So with every payment we make on the credit card or every day of going to class, we're improving and getting one step closer to successfully completing our goals!

One of my most favorite pictures of us, from my 19th birthday! It's perfect, don't you think?!