The Health Chronicles: Practicing Patience and Forgiveness
Managing One’s Own Lofty Standards
People who have been trained as high performing musicians are very often perfectionists. When you go through music juries (our equivalent of finals) every semester, you never quite get used to the pressure that comes with that, no matter how prepared you are. Imagine performing by yourself and your accompanist for anywhere from 6-10 people who are all highly accomplished musicians in their field. Some of them even have Grammy Awards (my voice teacher had one!). Each of them will take meticulous notes, scrutinizing every single little thing you do, let alone how you sound. Even if they are nice and rooting for you, it’s still terrifying.
It demands perfection.
The thing is, music is not perfect, and neither are the people who are performing it. And while I recognize this for myself, I still hold myself to the standards of those juries and subsequent performances that have happened since. Being a perfectionist doesn’t mean one expects immediate results, but it does mean that I can be very unforgiving when things are not going perfectly according to plan.
That makes it hard to pull oneself out of depression, right?
I think the strive for perfection also comes as a way to try and get in front of criticism too. For better or worse I am used to being told about all of the bad things I have done, and rarely if ever told of something good. Therefore, there’s almost an obsessive drive to beat the allegations of the bad all the time. And when something else inevitably gets criticized, the other extreme happens where it’s like, “well why bother trying at all if it’ll never be enough”?
This is my current battle. I need to find ways to forgive myself on my journey, while also blocking out those who only want to continue to tell me that I am not doing enough along the way. I need to understand that I will never be perfect, and that’s ok. I need to find the middle road that is aiming to move forward and striving for the best, but not slipping into the abyss when it does not go well for me. It’s a constant struggle, and one that I surely will be discussing with a professional.
Well then, that was a bit heavy huh? Welcome to what comes out of my subconscious at 4 AM while I write this. I have a happier note to end on, I promise. Let’s do some check-ins.
Did I drink last week? No.
Did I have junk food? Yes. The birthday cake was quite good.
Average Walking Distance: 4 Miles. That’s going to go up quite a bit soon. Wait and see.
Sleep Average: 6 Hours, 37 Minutes. Rough last few days. As you can see, I have woken up in the middle of the night and then barely gotten back to sleep a few times. I did not get back to sleep this morning.
Thank goodness for black tea.
Screen Time Average: 7 Hours, 29 Minutes. Waking up in the middle of the night did not help this at all. Even though I did not just stare and scroll, the extra awake time was not helpful.
Average Notifications: 436 per day. These are only going to continue to go up, and the one thing I really want to change is to make the Twitter notifications go down. A lot of them are from DMs for a writing group I am in though so that’s good I suppose.
I would like to end by giving some shoutouts to a few wonderful people I have met via Substack.
First, thank you to
for her wonderful publication and her recommendation! I have noticed a substantial uptick in my subscriptions since she has been so gracious with telling people that I am worth their time and eyeballs!Secondly,
has released her first book What if Cats Wrote Haikus and it is doing quite well with Amazon so far. Way to go! She and I have wonderful conversations, and she believes me to be a cat whisperer. Spoiler alert…I am.Finally, I’d like to shout out
for being someone who has been willing to listen to me. Her podcast and publication are excellent and often humorous motivation for me.I promised we would end on a high note. That’s all for now. I’ll see you all next week!
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Thanks for the shout-out ❤️ I'm always happy to listen to you 🙏
Thanks for the shoutout!! And also... and most importantly, happy birthdaaaayyyy!!!!