All apologies

"Our thoughts are the most powerful tools we've got." Jen Sincero, whose work I adore, in You Are a Badass

Here's what happens when I make a mistake, like the one related to this article where I had the quote written three times in my notes correctly, but somehow still wrote "free trade" instead of "fair trade." I apologize, then do what I can to fix it, in this case, letting my editor know and updating my posts about it. But then where I go off the rails is not being able to let it go. In my head, it's not the mistake that's the mistake, it's me who's the mistake. It's all I can think about, and I feel awful for letting down both the publication I'm writing for and the person involved. Then from there I go to: I'm a bad writer, and therefore a bad person, I will never get another assignment from them again, what was I thinking trying to work on such a project, maybe I should just give up on all the other things I'm writing. Okay, maybe not quite that, but I do know that all day, until I finally addressed it directly with my boyfriend when I had to because I was freaking out.

I forget sometimes that mistakes are human, and that when I allow myself, I learn from my mistakes and work as hard as I can not to make the same ones over and over again. Yet there is still that underlying sense that the mistake mars not just whatever it was related to, but that it's this giant black mark on me, that it will stay with me through everything else I do. In this case, it's relatively minor and has now been fixed, but I've made more than my share of mistakes that I've then expanded because I could only see the mistake, taking up more than its fair share of space in my head. I worry it like a loose tooth that always stays on the verge of coming out but never does; it just teeters in that space between almost being gone but holding on.

I'm in the midst of trying to correct/amend/fix a many years long financial mistake and while it's wonderful to be addressing the problem, the fact that it's actually taking many months to even get to the part where I can start digging in to fixing it makes me, once again, feel like a failure, like I will never be rid of this problem and that that means that I shouldn't even bother trying. It's the inertia, and the tying of all my problems into one giant problem that seems to multiply until it overtakes everything else that's the real issue. Because even I'm smart enough to know that it's pretty much guaranteed that I'll keep on making mistakes of one kind or another until I do, but that what I do when faced with them is what matters. I could tell you that I was working too fast or had a cold or any other excuse, but I don't have one. It was an error, and what I can do to avoid such errors in the future is to very minutely go over everything before I turn it in.

If I'd been alone today, I likely would've simply obsessed over this and kept on feeling awful. Instead, I was able to talk to my boyfriend about the various mistakes that feel so overwhelming lately and help make a plan for how to deal with them in the future, how to tackle the ones still pending and, most challenging of all, how to let it go. Sometimes it's much easier for me to see my faults and flaws and fuckups, which feel myriad, than the fact that sometimes I do make mistakes and as long as they are not deliberate or mean-spirited, all I can do is try harder next time, and know that a mistake doesn't negate the other parts of my article or day or life or career.

I hadn't thought of this aspect when I read the chapter in You Are a Badass called "Forgive or Fester," because I was focused on where I have to forgive other people for their flaws rather than hold on to my anger at their misdeeds, but when she writes "Holding onto resentment is like taking poison and waiting for your enemies to die," that can be turned inward just as much as outward. I can't ever expect anyone else to forgive me for my mistakes and imperfections if I don't forgive myself first. The first step she suggests is to "find compassion," and elaborates: "Finding compassion for yourself or someone else who did something so so so so awful is like pulling a bullet out of your arm: You may kick and scream and hate it at first, but, in the long run, it's the only way to start the real healing." I gained a lot of wisdom from her book, but that chapter was perhaps the most eye-opening. It was a wakeup call saying, There is a better way. And now I feel like it's a double gift, because I can apply those actions to myself. I can take responsibility, apologize, recognize that I have no control over what happens after that, and move on and try to be as badass as I can on the next piece, and the next, and the next.

Or as Steve Tobak wrote at Inc.:

Don't wallow in it or lament what could have been. Just pick yourself up, gain whatever wisdom you can from the experience, accept it as the new reality, and go from there. You're still in the band. Play your next note.

My first article for The Grindstone, and want to read: The Gifts of Imperfection

Looks like this never posted. OOPS! Pretend it's last week. Or maybe it did and I'm reposting. I've lost track of almost everything this week, but I am excited to read this book.

I just ordered The Gifts of Imperfection by Brené Brown, after seeing this Tweet by Alina Tugend, author of Better by Mistake, who inspired my first article for The Grindstone, which went up today, "How Your Mistakes Can Make You Better at Your Job." If you like it, I'd love it if you "liked" it on Facebook, posted it on your blog, etc. I always like to look good to my editors and...traffic is one way to do so.

I hope you like the piece; I learned a lot from Tugend's book and my interviewees, and am excited to be writing for The Grindstone - next up is couples who work together and when's the right time to go back to school. The site is part of B5 Media, which runs The Gloss and Crushable, both of which I've written for, among others.

Anyway, this book looks like it'll be good airplane reading:

"Atonement flipped on its ear"

Without getting into great detail, I fucked up something today (obviously not the first time), and feel really badly about it. But I also realize that that mistake is over and all I can do is move forward. I really like this idea from Karen Stabiner of "atonement flipped on its ear." Mainly because I think for many of us, it's the natural impulse to dwell pretty much forever on the mistakes. I do, even when there's no possible way I can undo them.

The mistakes I make in my personal life I tend to re-make ad nauseam, which pretty much defeats the point of atoning for them, to G-d or to myself. So that's all, just something I thought was worthwhile. I'm reading Charlotte Kasl's If The Buddha Got Stuck, among the five books I'm carting around, and not living in the past, remaining present, and taking action are all prominent points. See her site and her 16-step plan for more info.

Apologies are our day-to-day atonements, and lately it seems to me that they're tossed off reflexively, sometimes in the midst of the bad act itself; people seem to think they can leaven misbehavior with a shrug and a "sorry." You can tell they don't mean it; you can tell they're going to do exactly the same thing to someone else tomorrow, and shrug and apologize, and then do it again. Undoubtedly not what organized religion has in mind, which may be the reason my dad took refuge in temple even when there wasn't a formal service. The chanting and the singing and the silent reading changed the pace of his day and maybe, just maybe, brought him to moments of personal reflection. He had time not just to apologize but to think about how he might be a worthier guy down the line.

If his strategy didn't work for me, in the long run [thanks primarily to the soul-scorching tenure of an awfully self-righteous rabbi when I was a teen], I was still my father's daughter, still in need of some kind of spiritual frame. When our daughter was born, the need became an imperative, and so I distilled for Sarah the parts of my childhood that felt like faith. Our family became holiday central for dozens of people on Hannukah and Passover, the happy holidays, the ones where we eat and drink and give presents and celebrate that our ancestors had escaped yet again and we are all together. The High Holidays? Always a plate of apples and honey to welcome the new year, even though my husband and daughter love the former and aggressively dislike the latter. And always a conversation about what we might do better in the coming year, which is atonement flipped on its ear. I like having an active assignment. I like not just asking to be forgiven, but promising to learn from the trespasses of the past. I may not look for lessons alongside hundreds of other people dressed in good wool suits, like my dad did, but I look. We have that in common.

See also: "Atonement" at Joho the Blog, about Atonement and the Internet