Messing Up

I am very not perfect. I know that doesn’t come as a surprise to anyone. I often even miss typos in this blog. Not to mention the millions of other things I mess up or do wrong, and all the time I waste, and all the times I worry.

I am not perfect, but I’m getting more and more OK with that. There was a time when the worst thing in the world to me was disappointing someone or being unreliable. What I couldn’t stand more than anything was not doing what I said I was going to do.

But today, I had real evidence that I’m changing. I’m getting used to not being able to be perfect, and by not perfect, I mean not even close to perfect. I mean royally screwing up.

Today, all my appointments overlapped and so to “do it all” I had to let everyone know I would arrive late and leave early to more than one event.

So when I showed up right before I was supposed to start speaking in Athens this afternoon, only to find out I was supposed to be in Gainesville, I was …  frustrated. I was also grumpy and annoyed. I was a lot of bad things, but the one thing I wasn’t was panicked. Stuff happened. It happens to everyone. It happens to me.

I sent a text, made a phone call, and drove to Gainesville and gave my talk.

My former self would have been almost frozen in panic that a room of people and organizers were there waiting for me. But if these people didn’t understand that people mess up, then they would be the ones having the reallu bad day. 

And as it turns out, I wasn’t the big mess up. They had so much trouble with the AV system that I arrived as the speaker before me was about to wrap up.

Things happen. I messed up. People mess up. We shouldn’t be so hard on ourselves. We should thank God that we don’t mess up more often, learn a lesson, accept our frailty, and move on.

Thankful for a new day tomorrow.