Once more, with feeling.

After a much needed vacation from life and responsibilities (in Vegas, of course), I'm happy to report that I'm back to my normal self and ready to keep on keeping on.

Life got ridiculously busy over the past month and I realized that part of it was my own damn fault for a.) not recognizing when I've taken on too much and b.) not utilizing all of my time (i.e. there was a large amount of laziness in there that shouldn't have been there). But I'm back now and I'm moving on and not looking back. I'm starting everything (work, life and home) fresh, regardless of how old it is or how long ago it was supposed to be started/finished.

And with that, it's Week 5 of the Cure! I'm taking this week & weekend off from any outside responsibilities (i.e. gym, socializing, etc.) and focusing on my apartment. It's in desperate need of some calm and order and I'm confident that I can get everything back to where it was by the end of this week.
I'm going to start with my office area. If there's one thing I need, it's to get my butt in gear and not just organize my desk & paperwork but actually develop some sort of "system" so that things (mainly paperwork) don't get so out of control!

My other main focus, while more general and less Cure oriented, is actually doing/finishing things. I let my perfectionism get the better of me all the time and use it as an excuse to not "finish" projects and essentially I never get much accomplished simply because I think it's not good enough. Nothing is ever "good enough" for me, I understand that. Understanding is step 1, so I got that down. Step 2 is learning to change my definition of "good enough." Maybe the finished product isn't as perfect as what I had envisioned, fine, I can deal with that. But as long as it's "good enough" (i.e. I'm not ashamed to call it mine), then it's good enough to finish.
My first baby step happened at the beginning of this week, when I submitted my teeny-tiny-not-perfect-but-good-enough home to Apartment Therapy's Small Cool contest. Being able to shift my mindset from "what do I need to do in order to win" to "what do I need to do in order to enter the contest" made a world of difference. Suddenly I wasn't so overwhelmed and worried about failure or not being perfect. I entered, that was all I had to do, and I succeeded in doing that. No failure here! :)
You can see (and vote for!) my entry on Apartment Therapy here.