over-achiever

Every so often I have an experience that reminds me that I am an over-achiever.

I'm no perfectionist.  It's not about perfection per say.  It's just about what I think is best, what I think is excellent and I won't settle for less.

Case in point.

Last month I took a team to Romania from my church.  Yes, the trip I've written one blog about, promised more and haven't delivered yet.  Well, this morning we were schedule to give a report on the trip.  This usually consists of a person or three sharing some stories and details of the trip and maybe some photos on powerpoint.  There is absolutely nothing wrong with this form of sharing about a missions trip.

But I'm an over-achiever.  With a Mac computer.  That has iMovie.  Don't you think it would be cool if I made a video of our trip using photos and then had our team members share brief anecdotes that I would record with the built-in microphone?  Yes, I think that would be fabulous.

Oh, I spent at least 15 hours working on my 4-minute presentation.  I know that's pretty much par for the course.  It drove me crazy.  I am not meant to look at the same screen for hours and hours on end.  I had no idea what time of the day it was when I was working on it.

No only am I an over-achiever.  But I'm a bit of a procrastinator too.  I'm motivated by that adrenaline of a deadline.

So I put the finishing touches on my project last night.

Where I found out, googling my issues, that there is a glitch in the version of software I have, causing the audio level adjustments to not work.  I couldn't get the music to lower, when the narration came in.  I gave up.

Exporting takes a long time, so I started it and headed to bed.  Morning came and I grabbed my flash drive and the computer and headed in.  Time to upload the file for service.  But it wasn't on the flash drive.  Begin export again.  Still not working right.  Try again.

By now, it's time for our first service.  During which I went up and shared about the trip and showed one photo of our team.  Thankfully, I succeeded in exporting the file and uploading it for our tech team right before I had to go teach a class.

It was a super stressful morning.  During which I was mad at myself for procrastinating.  Mad at the software for not working properly.  Mad that I was such an overachiever because it would have taken an hour to create a powerpoint with music.

But no, I'm an overachiever.  So I have to always go one up, on myself.  I never compete with others.  It's always my own brain. I'm the girl who gets a B+ and is mad I didn't get an A, while most people are rejoicing they got a B!  (if I was a perfectionist, I'd have been a straight-A student...but I wasn't)

This is pretty indicative of my life.  I always try to do more.  I always over-commit.  I never want to take the "easy way out" because I expect more of myself.  But I need to take it a little easier on myself.

While cleaning off the "counter of death" (aka where we stack everything and random junk collects) I found a few Christmas cards that were addressed, but had no stamps on them...and were never sent.  Then I found thank-you's Miss Rose wrote for her birthday in January, that hadn't been distributed.

I have to send out Christmas cards.  I have to do hand-written thank you notes.

Good execution, poor follow-through.

Sometimes, mediocrity is good.  Especially when it preserves your sanity.  But, I will always strive for excellence in my life.  I can't help it.