it takes discipline to suck this much

survival as a strategic underachiever

Hey! Today’s essay is about perspective. Also, I’m about to venture into the Sunday idle for a summer treat—highly recommend you do the same. Enjoy!

view from my stoop. not medicore!!!

I slide through my front door, screen banging behind me, to find my mother has been at my house this afternoon. I’ve walked home from my bus stop at peak afternoon sun, the pavement sending heat through the soles of my shoes. I kick them off; peel socks from feet. Mom has been gardening, Nova is mid-bite with afternoon snack, and now the kitchen is full of commotion: the crack of cubes-against-tumbler as water glasses fill; yawps of greeting as Mike jogs down the stairs. I’d aimed to sneak away to my office, get a bit more done in these final minutes before dinnertime, but this spontaneous collision of house-dwellers, eager to catch up on the day, is enough to waylay my plans.

I fall into an easy joy, and the evening comes and goes. The next morning brings Saturday: no bus commute, no peeling of socks today. I reach for the fridge—cold coffee—and I remember: the milk. The fucking milk! In yesterday’s Haze of Happiness™ upon my arrival home, I’d forgotten to unpack the cooler I bring back and forth with me to work each day, full of milk my body made while my mind was doing other things. I’d left it out all night, and it was spoiled, unusable. The precious product of my time spent pumping, my effort, mental and physical, my sacrifice—squandered. Wow, I thought. I really suck at this. 

I’ve written before about the way breastfeeding (and pumping especially) has the semi-embarrassing effect of making me feel like a literal wizard for being able to sustain human life. Needless to say, when I go to all that effort, succeed in producing enough milk, and then stumble moments before the finish line by failing to put it in the fridge? SMH. But this isn’t an essay about breastfeeding. Instead, it’s about what it feels like to try to do a lot of things at once—and what it feels like is to be pretty bad at all of them. 

aiming for perfect

I grew up drinking the cultural Kool-Aid of achievement = worthiness, and for so much of my life, I had the time and the stamina to let my perfectionism dictate how I spent my time. Even after becoming a parent, my perfectionism fought its way past the sleeplessness and into my new responsibilities, refusing to quit: though I technically had to stop working at 5p to scoop up Nova from her nanny, once she was asleep for the night, you better believe I was poppin’ that laptop open again. 

And it fueled a nefarious cycle: the same impulse that drove me to keep breastfeeding longer than was logical (and therefore stay awake each night later than I wanted to  … in order to dream-feed her one more time to achieve a “perfect” full nights’ sleep) created the very space I’d fill with more work. I’m staying up late anyway to feed, I’d think to myself begrudgingly, so might as well keep polishing this turd of a Google doc for a few more hours. (Ed note: what kind of busted logic is this? Read a book! Take a gd shower!).

For a long time, though, my desire to “achieve” has been in conflict with a deep desire for balance. I’ve never been comfortable with tradeoffs, preferring to live in a fantasy world where I get to have the balance I crave: days rife with meaningful work, with carnal needs (and pleasures) like sleep, exercise, and amazing food; with joyful, present parenting; creativity; connection; time for play. And, because this is my fantasy, I get to have the best versions of all those things, obviously. 

reality check

I know, of course, that this fantasy stack isn’t in the cards—and given the choice, I’d rather have a shitty little slice of all my dreams than give up an entire category to make another one better. Just that, for me, is progress! For a while, I’ve been on the path to learning how much discipline it takes, philosophically speaking, to acknowledge the fact that, no, I will not live forever, and yes, that means I cannot “do it all.” 

But I’m struck by the operational discipline it requires, as well; the discipline required to not just hypothetically accept my finitude, but to actually live it. Like: physically tearing myself away from the aforementioned obsessive Google doc revision at the end of the work day to get to a yoga class. Stepping out of that class a few minutes early (skipping savasana, arguably the entire point of yoga amirite….) so that I have time to jot down ideas for an essay on my walk home. Awkwardly stepping away from a juicy hallway conversation at work to go pump. Pumping—a much less efficient form of feeding—in the first place, ie untethering myself from my baby in order to be physically present at a job at all. 

What makes this stepping away so difficult? It has something to do with standards, or taste, perhaps. We’re all familiar with the concept articulated by Ira Glass years ago about art-making, that whenever we start making stuff, there’s a gap between our sense of taste—what drew us to want to make stuff in the first place—and our ability to achieve the quality or craftsmanship implicit to that taste.

Ira argues that we can close the gap by doing a high volume of the work. Do a lot of the thing; go really deep on the thing—and eventually, our skills will catch up. But what if our goal isn’t excellence at one thing, but a satisfying balance of many? Without a singular focus, doesn’t that mean there’ll be a gap between where we are and where we want to be with literally everything that we do? WTF are we supposed to do with our taste then? 

a many-sided shape 

I’ve written before about Oliver Burkeman, who, in his book Four Thousand Weeks, pitches “strategic underachievement” as one path to making the most of our time on earth. In other words, nominating in advance the areas of your life in which you don’t expect excellence. Here’s Burkeman:

“When we recognize the shortness of life — and accept the fact that some things have to be left unaccomplished, whether we like it or not — we are freer to focus on what matters. Rather than succumbing to the mentality of “better, faster, more,” we can embrace being imperfect, and be happier for it.

To live this way is to replace the high-pressure quest for work-life balance with something more reasonable — a deliberate kind of imbalance.”

I like this strategy, as it requires intentionality up front. This makes it harder to criticize myself after the fact. It feels a little less bad to, say, serve a pre-made chicken pot pie for dinner when you planned it that way, rather than aiming to cook, running out of time, and panic-pivoting to the freezer. (Also, frozen chicken pot pie rules.)

While the frame of strategic underachievement helps, I still chafe at any acknowledgement that I’m underachieving at all. But there is one thing that makes my choice to suck across the board a bit more palatable, and that’s this: the discipline to see myself as a many-sided shape. Or, to invoke Americana hottie / my college crush Walt Whitman in Song of Myself, 51:

Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.)

That is: I must refer to myself as my “multitudes” constantly, reflexively, until it becomes second nature.

What I mean is that it’s easy to see ourselves only within the context in which we’re currently sitting: in front of my Google doc, I always feel like I haven’t written as clearly or thoroughly as I could. Among coworkers, I’m acutely aware of how much further I could be in my career. When I misunderstand Nova as we chat during her bath, I sense my once-deep knowledge of her developing language has begun to atrophy since I’ve gone back to work. At yoga, I look at the bodies next to mine and think about how soft my muscles are by comparison, from years of using my body to grow children instead of practicing handstands.

But what if, in these moments, I can ask myself to zoom out? Rather than seeing a lack of abs, I notice a parenting muscle, a career muscle, a muscle that’s pretty freaking good at cooking clever, delicious meals for a family of four. Individually, each muscle isn’t as strong as it could be—but together, they make a body. 

So I’m going to keep at it, this discipline required to suck; to practice the art of pulling myself away before it’s perfect. Because that’s the only way I’ll get to show up somewhere else: to feel the chunk and heft of a baby on a hip, the satisfying loop of articulating a thought, the tweak of a muscle, the sizzle of garlic in olive oil, the joy of a surprise visit, the crush of spoiled milk. All, if I’m lucky, in the same day.

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Thanks for reading! Obviously need to know what you’re sucking at recently, but do not hesitate to brag about what you’re secretly or very obviously kind of nailing (as a random example, making sure milk gets into your fridge). I hope summer is spoiling your Nowhere this Sunday!

🥛, Becca

Nova will never know what it feels like to be mediocre, bc she’s … perfect