There’s a store where we grocery shop that on a clear day with no traffic and all green lights, it takes ten minutes to get there.

On other days, it takes about 15 minutes. I made that number up, because while it hasn’t taken ten minutes since the one time it did, I refuse to do any real research about how long it actually does take — anything more than ten minutes will be a disappointment.

Since it’s centrally located in an area with a number of other places we go to sort of regularly, I always have that ten minute drive in my head whenever I’m headed that way, as a sort of measuring stick for planning when I’ll need to leave to get to a counseling appointment, how long to give myself for a trip to the craft store, or figuring out a trip to that place that has a bull’s eye on my wallet.

Every time I make the drive anywhere near that intersection, I’m either telling myself I can make it in ten minutes, or telling myself all the reasons why I have to stop holding myself to this ten minute drive standard when it doesn’t take ten minutes to get there. The whole time I’m talking myself out of this ridiculous and arbitrary standard, there’s still that little voice in the back of my head saying, “but it could take ten minutes!”

When I take a big step back, there are a whole lot of areas in my life where I apply this thinking – using the standard of that one magical day when we went somewhere and did something, the day was fine, the lights were green, and no one whined.

The thing about these magical moments is that the harder you try to plan them, the less likely they are to happen. You’re left with these confusing bits of time where everything is just flowing and you don’t know why.

When you try to do it again, it doesn’t work. You’re still holding that magical moment as the standard, but there aren’t any concrete things in your toolbox that can recreate what happened the first time.

I’m sure the lesson is that perfection isn’t possible, but it is SUCH a tease.

I end up procrastinating so many things because I think, if I have just a little more time, I’ll be able to plan the heck out of this and make it just right, OR, I’m just going to delay the thing because I know it’s not going to live up to my expectations.

I’m hoping realistic expectations is on some sort of graph where it increases in correlation with your age. Maybe someday soon, I’ll just tenderly pat the little overachiever inside of me on the shoulder, and still plan 15 or 20 minutes for that “ten minute drive.”

The thought of wasting even a minute that I could be spending doing something besides driving – even if that thing is as lame as starting a load of laundry – I will do it, right up until the moment I know with every fiber of my body that I am going to be late, and then I leave, giving myself six or eight of the minutes I need for that Not Actually ten minute drive.

The self sabotage is frustrating mostly because you can see it as it’s happening. You know you are trying to control the ways things will be imperfect, because of course they will be. It’s like watching a preventable train wreck. Time is subjective, you have a limitless amount, really, and yet we whittle it down to a tiny, useless splinter trying to conform it to our expectations.

I’m in the middle of a project now that I am afraid won’t be as amazing as I want it to be. I’m using the project to procrastinate other projects I’m even more intimidated by. In the process of working on it, I made that “ten minute drive” to the craft store, in the rain on a Sunday afternoon, and hit every single red light.

I stood in the aisle, looking for the perfect thread to match my fabric, a purplish brownish reddish plummy batik. Unsurprisingly, finding thread to match the changeable, vague color of the fabric was a challenge. I found three different “perfect” matches for the fabric and it probably took me longer than 10 minutes to get home.

There gets a point where there are so many layers of perfectionism that you have to laugh at yourself or you will cry. But, at least at this point in my life, it’s more of a sad laugh, because then I go right back to trying to be perfect.

Can you identify?