Honestly.
What kind of person stays up until the wee hours of the morning the night before their movers come in order to make an obscene amount of Christmas cookies for no good reason at all?
(two thumbs gesturing at self)
This person.
Here’s my problem.
I’m both a detail-oriented perfectionist and I’m also an extreme procrastinator.
A terrible combination.
Anytime there are big events with things that have to get done (studying for an exam, packing for a vacation, cleaning the house before company comes over, etc.), I tend to wait until the last minute to get started but then I can never finish said projects quickly. Nope, not me. I have to spend hours doing an extremely meticulous, over-the-top job, which usually results in a lack of sleep the night before an important day (finals, traveling, moving, etc.).
The thing is, I’m a person who can get by on very little sleep and be perfectly functional, so I kid myself into thinking that my way of doing things is fine because it always ends up working out somehow. (Or in college, I always convinced myself with the classic “I work better under pressure” excuse to cover up the fact that I would constantly be starting papers the night before they were due!) Sure I lose a little bit of sleep, but everything always gets done and that’s what’s important. I’m a night owl and tend to be most productive after dark, so I tell myself that staying up all night to do things is just “the way I am” and not just my own fault for waiting all day to start working on whatever needs to get done.
But the thing is that most of the time these things I stay up doing really don’t need to get done at all. For whatever reason, I get laser-focused on goals that are really not super important in the scheme of things, like baking a cake before company comes over or editing photos for an album to put up on Facebook. Sure they’re things that would be nice to accomplish, but they’re not critical to-do’s worth losing sleep over…at least not to a rational person. But for me, once I have it in my mind that I’m going to do something, I feel like I have to get it done. But since I usually don’t get motivated to actually start working on it until like 11pm the night before it needs to happen, I end up staying up all night to finish something that is really not all that important. I also feel like Christmas tends to intensify this aspect of my personality that’s already pretty extreme to begin with because I have all these expectations about how I want everything to be special.
In the back of my mind, I realize that I need to change and either get things accomplished in a time frame that allows me to get a good night’s sleep, or just let some of this little stuff go and not try to stress out over making everything just so. I know these are things that I especially need to work on before I have kids otherwise I’m going to run myself ragged slash be fit for a straight jacket because everything can’t be perfect all the time.
.
.
.
But lucky for you, I haven’t worked through my neuroses just yet because Tuesday night I made all of these:
You just get a tease for now because today I’ve got to finish up another pre-Christmas project that has to get done by dinnertime. (Yes, another thing I waited to do until the very last minute, you’re shocked I’m sure) But once I’m finished with that, I’ll be posting all the recipes and lots more photos of my Christmas goodies (and I made even more stuff than what’s in that picture…scary) and I can’t wait to share them with you! Xoxo
PS:
Everything with the movers went well and our apartment is completely empty!
Well…except for our air mattress, Lola’s crate/bed/toys/etc., two weeks worth of clothing for Cam, probably six weeks worth of clothing for me (because I wasn’t sure what I’d want to wear in Michigan/Oregon), Christmas presents, our vaccuum and cleaning supplies, cookies, magazines I want to read on our drive, and basically a bunch of other random things that we somehow think are all going to fit in our Jeep when we leave on Saturday.
Should be interesting.
But as one of the movers said yesterday after they took the last box out of the apartment, “It’s just the end of the beginning!”
🙂