Good Enough

You can consider this blog post a Public Service Announcement or a look at me working through my own baggage in real time – but why can’t it be both?  I was going to save this post for the end of the year, but my recent experiences over Thanksgiving made me think that it might be helpful to others to say it all now, heading into what is for many people (for many reasons) the most stressful time of the year.

Social media is designed to be a highlight reel of our lives, frequently showing us at our best, even when that’s not how we’re feeling.  I retreated from the world significantly in 2024, meaning that these blog posts (as thoughtful, well-researched, and polished as I can get them) and periodic Facebook posts (with carefully crafted pairings of posed photos and witty tidbits) are a large part of what the world has seen of me.  I try to be generally open about what I’m feeling and how I’m doing – if for no other reason than to model the fact that it’s OK not to be OK – but I’m fairly sure that the level of struggle I’ve experienced this year has not really come through.

Recalibrating

My mom was very much the glue of our family.  She made sure everyone was together and happy, especially over the holidays – with delicious food, an impeccably decorated house, and an abundance of thoughtfully selected presents to open.  She was also a lifelong perfectionist and chronic ball of anxiety who took responsibility for others’ emotions and didn’t sleep more than about four hours a night.  I knew that our first holiday season without her would be fundamentally different, and I also felt like anything I did to try to replicate it would be unhealthy for me, riddled with unrealistic expectations and attachments to a time that has passed.  So I decided not to bother.

I’ve hosted Thanksgiving dinners before – and really had a fun time in the process, I might add. But I knew it wasn’t going to be a possibility this year, which has regularly involved a struggle to complete the most basic of daily tasks.  My demanding cats and job have resulted in some semblance of routine and order in my life, but many days this year my definition of “success” has shifted to simply getting through the day.  I don’t know how much of what I experienced this year was depression from losing my mother, debilitating exhaustion from a lengthy bout of COVID, post-COVID depression, [2] hopelessness with respect to the state of the world, or a perfect storm of all of the above, but I regularly lacked what I consider to be a basic level of functionality.

I know plenty of people who have had a hard year.  I don’t know if it’s truly random chance filtered through a lens of confirmation bias or if things are legitimately getting harder for everyone as we age.  A very dear friend of mine likes to remind me that I’m “leveling up,” in gaming parlance, as I gain more experience points.  I found myself encouraging a colleague this past week and described a meme I had seen on social media that said if you gave 40% when you only had 40% to give, you actually gave 100% – noting that we should never be judging ourselves for doing our best, especially when our best is objectively variable.

And that’s the attitude I brought to Thanksgiving dinner this week, on a rare occasion when I took my own advice.  Did I want to cook an elaborate and delicious meal for my dad and pack some up for my aunt and uncle as they worked late at their Christmas shop?  Of course!  Did I know that was completely unrealistic and probably unhealthy?  Absolutely.  As tired as I was, as little motivation as I had to do anything or go anywhere, my primary goal was to make sure that my dad wouldn’t be alone on Thanksgiving; my secondary goal was that he would be eating something better than frozen pizza.  Recalibrating my own expectations for the day, I was reasonably sure we could clear those two bars.

Turkey Day

So here’s what actually happened: on Thanksgiving morning I grabbed a cooler from the garage and filled it with whatever relevant food or ingredients I could find that were already in our cupboards, fridge, and freezer.  That afternoon, on the other side of Pennsylvania, my dad and I hung out in his kitchen – drinking, talking, and cooking together.  I made pie crust from scratch (because where was I going to find a frozen pie crust on Thanksgiving?)  He had potatoes, which I boiled and he mashed.  I opened a jar of cranberry sauce and a box of mushroom gravy.  We defrosted some very freezer-burned lima beans and IKEA vegetable “meatballs.”  I found a 10-year-old bottle of apple cider mead in his basement.  We sat down together and ate our dinner off of mismatched plates while a fire burned in the fireplace.  He went to bed early, and I baked mincemeat and pumpkin pies, which served as breakfast the next morning.

For as little food as we actually made, the leftovers lasted for the next two days. For someone who hates leftovers and vegetarian food, he ate them – even the “meatballs.”  I would normally joke that he must have been really sick of frozen pizza, but it was legitimately the best, most complete and balanced meal I had made for myself in a long time – certainly this year (a year in which my stated goal was to do more cooking and have more dinners with friends… something that clearly hasn’t happened).

I’m sharing this story because the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas (or Epiphany, if I’m being honest) becomes a frenzy of cookie baking, card writing, and gift wrapping in my house.  They are things I fundamentally love doing, but I’ve had precious little motivation so far this year for things I ostensibly love doing (writing, gardening, cooking, seeing friends…), which does not leave me with a lot of confidence for how productive I’ll actually be in the coming weeks.  This year has been a struggle from the beginning, and I don’t foresee a surge of motivation coming out of nowhere just because my to-do list has expanded in December.  If anything, that sounds like a recipe for increased guilt, not increased productivity.

As we head into the final month of 2024, I think I need to take a page from this year’s Thanksgiving playbook: looking at my goals in their most basic form and clearing that bar in the simplest way possible.  If any part of this post resonated with you, you may want to consider identifying ways to simplify your own routine.  And if you do, I’d be curious to hear how you shift your holiday approach from attempting perfection to achieving “good enough.”

Thank you for reading this “good enough” post, which I needed in order to process some emotions and to hold myself accountable for healthier behaviors in the future.  I am thankful for many things – including you, dear reader.

[1] https://x.com/knitcodemonkey/status/1691273129585496064/photo/1

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/12/well/long-covid-depression-symptoms-treatment.html

[3] https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=478609971577456&id=100082853726829&set=a.137298379041952