Happy New Year! (2012)

I love this time of year. I love how we're all encouraged to take a few moments (or maybe more) to review the highlights and lowlights of the last year.

As we head into 2012, with all its uncertainty, I thought I would would share two things:

ONE ~ It's Worth Doing Poorly

In a conversation I had with a guy who definitely knows what he's talking about, he shared something with me after I explained how impossible it seems to get everything done I want to get done, in the perfect manner I always like to get things done in.

He said:

"One thing I had to learn the hard way was that if something is worth doing, it's worth doing poorly." 

The significance of the statement hit me immediately. Coming from a family whose work-motto was, "If you're going to do a job, do it right," I realized how much grief and stress that motto had been causing me.

Raising Gabrielle has seemed impossible some days and weeks. We've reached lows we never thought we would. Our parenting has been poor and clumsy on many, many days. We've been anything but perfect parents, spouses, and friends.

His advice, though, was so simple and so right: If the job, goal, or task is worth doing, it's more important to do it than worrying about getting it done perfectly.

And there's that word again: perfect. Our culture of perfect. Our collective expectations that things are supposed to be perfect. That there are touchdowns in life.  Well, there's no such thing as perfect, and there are no touchdowns.

The universe keeps on truckin', with or without us, and it doesn't care whether or not we've incarnated our ideals.

So, I share this on the first day of the new year (as we think back on all that's happened in the last 12 months, and think forward to all the things we hope will happen in the next 12 months) because I'm sure we all have a few things in our lives that are vitally important for us to get done, but things that seem utterly impossible. Things that seem like a seemingly impenetrable mountain pass.

If the benefits of searching and scrambling and climbing over these impasses are worth it, then I suppose it's worth climbing up and over them poorly and clumsily. If we do, I think our lives – and everyone's lives who touch ours – will benefit. And we'll all be better for it.

TWO ~ Happy New Year!
A 60 second clip of the Ross kids on the first day of 2012 ... I can't wait to look back a year from now and watch this vid and reminisce on all that's happened in the coming year.

Happy New Year to everyone, and all the best in 2012!