Mistakes and fixing them

In the past couple weeks, here are a sampling of the ways I have messed up:

• drove to the shopping plaza that has Famous Footwear and Hand and Stone, did an errand, then drove to the shopping plaza that has DSW and Massage Envy only to realize I needed to go to Famous Footwear, and that it wasn’t in that plaza
• hung up with a customer 5 seconds before I clicked one more time, finding out that yes, contrary to what I thought and told her, Uber does actually offer a driving service to non-smartphone users, aka a regular taxi company
• did not blog once per week as intended
• went to the gym and only ran on a treadmill for 1.5 miles, left without doing any weights
• ducked into Target to waste time and use the restroom, left without buying anything and felt successful, only to remember what I needed from Target on the way home
• set my alarm for 7:02PM instead of 7:02AM, was 30 min late to work
• (not in last couple weeks, but) bought a new car when my employment is on a temporary basis AKA not necessarily secure
• got into bed, got back up and brought a bag of tortilla chips back to bed & ate them immediately prior to sleep
• ignored red flags and continued to invest emotional energy in men/boys who are uninterested in or unworthy for a relationship
• replied “adios!” when someone told me to have a good weekend (instead of the obvious socially accepted response “thanks, you too!”)
• wore the wrong sweater/necklace/dress/boots combination and looked frumpy
• ate eggs from the dining hall and didn’t notice that the sign said they contained milk
• asked my BFF about the micro-details of when to text/how to interpret texts/what to say back so many times that she literally purchased me a magic-8 ball

These are the ones that stick out. That last one isn’t a true mistake, since obvs my BFF likes talking to and helping me, buuut it got excessive and probably annoying. The bad part was the overanalyzing/obsessing, BUT, bonus, I got a gift out of it!

So, that’s my brain. One of the joys of anxiety/depression is ruminating. Loops of thought that play over and over and over, generally focused on bad things that have happened or mistakes I have made. I’m getting better at accepting that I can’t control when bad things happen to me, buuuut I’m still moderately stuck on the letting-go-of-things-I-messed-up. The above are a hodgepodge of work, internal, health, and interpersonal. The running themes are things I have done that [I believe] will make people think less of me and times I disappoint myself (I suppose that is just me thinking less of me).

But what if I removed the “think” from thinking less of me?

Because, though some of the items on this list have caused me to lose sleep or increased my stress, none of them are crises. I can deal with them. (That thought in and of itself shows progress!) And progress is good. Slow but good. After all, I’m not going to end my lifelong trend of acting like every next guy will be The Guy all at once. (My–optimistic, if extremely naive–motto is “it could happen!”)

It’s the thinking-the expectations my mind builds based on very limited data-that hurts. I’m working on finding a way to fix mistakes in the real world, so they stop bouncing around my head. Walking around in and reacting to reality rather than staying trapped in my thought-fog. And letting mistakes go if there’s nothing I can do about it! And doing better (probably due to being more mindful) next time.

To be continued!