Nablopomo: Day One

So because I did such a great job of it last year, I have signed up to do Nablopomo again. I dunno, I guess I like to set myself up for failure. This is especially apparent because I have not posted anything in nearly two months and now I think I can start posting every day. Uh huh.

So today is day one. I will start with an apology for my extended absence. There are many reasons, but it all boils down to: I have just not felt like blogging. Plus, I have this huge post that I have been working on to commemorate Matilda's first birthday (back in September), and it's still not finished. One of my greatest character flaws is my inability to move on when I have been unable to perfectly complete some other huge task I have set for myself. Because I had not perfected the first birthday post, I was incapable of writing anything else. This has always been a problem. I remember in the sixth grade we were all assigned to draw pictures of dragons. (For the life of me, I cannot remember why we were assigned this particular task.) Everyone else in the class finished their drawings in a couple of days and all of the results were tacked up around the room. I, on the other hand, had to create this intricate portrait of a warrior princess fighting a serpentine water dragon--a fantastic and complex undertaking that would have been the greatest dragon in the class if I had ever finished it. As it was, I was never able to get it JUST RIGHT and so it sat in the bottom of my desk for the rest of the school year, never to be admired on the classroom wall.

I get a lot of compliments on those things in life that I do manage to complete to my strict standards--compliments about how everything I bother doing is done so well. This is nice to hear, but people don't understand that for everything they see that looks so good are a dozen other projects frustrating the hell out of me because I cannot get them JUST RIGHT. These failures haunt me to the point of incapacitation. I go two months without posting a blog entry because I cannot get that last one to be perfect. This is the mixed blessing of being OCD...the things that you manage to finish are exquisite, but the things that are less than exquisite sit in the bottom of your desk mocking you and undermining your joy about those other accomplishments. There is a very fine line between meticulous and neurotic.