Awesome Disabled

“If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well,” says the idiom. And I don’t disagree. There is value in working hard and being effortful with things that are important.

My classroom version of this saying is, “If it’s worth doing, it’s worth taking time.” I remind my students that gaining skills is a long game, and it takes a lot of time and energy. I tend to prioritize large projects over one-off activities so that we can feel justified in investing time and energy.

So there are some things that are worth doing well, and taking lots of time to do. (My novels, for example, or our class blog. Also, I’m working on a creative non-fiction memoir.)

But there are also things that we feel tempted to do well, or not at all. Those are often the ones to do badly. As a Spoonie, I have responsibilities that go on, whether or not I have energy to deal with them. Things like my car, my house, and my children (who need food, clothing, shelter, and education, regardless of how I’m feeling).

When it comes to dinner, there’s a pull toward presenting Pinterest-perfect and nutritionally-balanced plates. That may be the ideal. But the reality is sometimes a messy house and an exhausted me, and very little food in the fridge ready to eat. It’s times like that that I realize that something is better than nothing, and I gotta get some food in our bellies no matter what. I have been exploring roasted sheet pan meals– throwing some frozen meat and veg onto the baking sheet with some olive oil, salt & pepper, putting it in the oven with the timer on, then go back to my rest. When the timer beeps, I’ll have a warm, good-enough meal for my kids.

I wasn’t always like this. As a single mom, I held myself to a high standard, and would chastise myself harshly for not meeting my own standards. One time, I was brave and posted a “less-than-perfect” moment to social media. It was butt cold and my kids were going stir crazy in the apartment, so I brought them to the McDonald’s drive through and bought them each a happy meal. I drove to a nearby parking lot, and we ate our food in the car, heater on max. I took a selfie of the three of us in the car with our food and toys. I posted it with a narrative about how we are making it work, even when things are super-cold and I’m exhausted.

My friend, who’s a social worker, posted a comment, saying, “What I see is that your kids are fed, warm, and you’re having a nice time together getting out of the house. Great job, mama!”

That shifted things for me. It was true– my kids were warm and fed, and they had smiles on their faces, proudly showing off their new toys. We were listening to music, grooving and laughing. For me, it felt awful because I was deeply in pain from my separation. But, looked at objectively, we were all doing okay.

Managing my family solo during my custody time was exhausting, and with a stressful job, I sometimes only have “scraps” of energy left for the rest of my life.

As a recovering high achiever^TM, I have been used to doing things to the highest standard. Any hint that anything I did that didn’t meet the highest possible standard felt like a massive betrayal (of myself, to myself). Any suggestion became the top priority for improvement, and everything I did reflected the need to follow that suggestion, and do it to the highest degree. Another suggestion became another priority, until I had way more priorities than I could handle.

It worked well, until it didn’t. Then I got burned out, and stayed burned out. And that’s no good for anyone, so I had to change it.

Over the years, I got better at doing things badly. I bought some sanitizer wipes (worried about the environmental impact, I had stayed away from single-use wipes) and used them to clean the apartment. The wipes were far more sensory-friendly to me, as I could tolerate holding them much more than a wet cloth. The fact that I can pull one out of the tub, ready to go, reduces the number of steps before I can start cleaning surfaces. If I used a cloth, I would have to find the cloth itself, find the cleaning product, put the product on the cloth, and wet the cloth. This small shift made a huge difference for me, and I can manage my household cleaning much better.

I’ve also been vacuuming badly. The normal thing is that, when you take out the vacuum, you vacuum all the floors– it doesn’t seem “worth it” otherwise. But who the hell decides what’s worth it or not for me? I’m the only one. And that means that I can decide my own metrics for things. If there is a dirty patch of carpet, and I only have the energy to clean that one patch, hey presto! That patch gets cleaned, and the vacuum goes away. It seems silly to refuse to clean one dirty patch, just because I can’t clean the rest of the house. Some of these Puritanical standards make their way into our zeitgeist without us critically examining them. We seem to want to have to “earn” our rest and relaxation, and we tend to emotionally self-flagellate for not meeting these arbitrary standards.

When it comes to doing things badly, no one does it quite like children. As the only adult member of my household, I have to rely on the non-adult members of the household for things. My kids empty the dishwasher, and they put things away approximately. I get annoyed when I see plates stacked on top of bowls, then more bowls on top of the plates. This makes no sense, dudes. But also, it’s done. And I did not do it. That in itself has value for me. Everything is in the right cupboard– there aren’t bowls randomly in the fridge, or next to the pots and pans. It’s a bit annoying to Jenga the pieces out of the cupboards, but it’s not the end of the world.

I don’t want to nit-pick everything they do, because then they will be demotivated to do things. If I have a suggestion, I can make it once, and explain the rationale. I don’t want our relationship to devolve into a series of nit-picks– I want us all to feel like we are working towards a common goal. It’s annoying af when my kids do things sloppily, but they do it without a fuss or a battle. And I think they tried. I want them to have room to do things badly in their lives as well– I don’t want to become their internal voice, constantly criticizing them. They have their own spoons to manage, as well.

I’ve been doing things badly at work too. Teaching is one of the occupations that is never “done”– there’s always more work to do. Marking is one of the things that I’ve been doing badly– not doing a sloppy job of the kids’ marks (that would be uncool), but really interrogating whether students need marks at all in an assignment. As teachers, we have an unconscious bias about assignments needing “a mark” in order to be valid as assignments. This, to me, is similar to vacuuming the whole floor instead of just the dirty patch. I would rather give robust feedback in situ versus getting overwhelmed by having to write a number on every single sheet I touch.

My students know where they are and what their next steps are in a meaningful way. That’s all they need. When it’s close to report card time, I do a bunch of “marked” assignments so that I have marks for their report cards. The rest of the year, they’re practicing their skills and gaining confidence. And, of course, doing awesome projects. I do enough assignments with marks that the students (and their parents) know where they’re at marks-wise, but I trust my ability to assess the students’ skills, and I don’t need 50 million data points. It’s better for me to be present in the classroom and provide really robust instruction and meaningful practice. This way, I’m prioritizing my energy towards high-impact strategies (feedback in the classroom), rather than massive energy sucks (writing a mark on every piece of paper and being grumpy about it). By giving up arbitrary self-expectations, I can focus on what’s actually important.

There is a time to perform at a high level, and to invest a ton of energy into it. There is a time to dot every i and cross every t, and ensure that everything is exactly as it should be. But those times are much fewer and farther between than we think. The vast majority of the time, good enough is just fine. Doing it badly still means it’s getting done, and there’s nothing wrong with that.