Monday, April 06, 2009

Ding, Ding, Ding

It's been a great day.
I know everyone has their idea of fun.
When it comes to work, mine is methodical tasks.
So I like it when there's a pile of filing to do,
when there are appointments to be made and phones to answer.
Isn't it a good thing that's what my job is partly made up of?

I am so glad I can see some humour in the learning process.
I dutifully scanned the packing slip, emailed it away and was quite pleased with myself. About a half an hour later I went to file the photocopy. I looked at the name on it and thought, "Hmmm. I don't think that's the person I emailed it to. I don't quite remember. If I email her and say, "hey, did you get a copy of this receipt by mistake she'll think I'm a few bricks short a load if I didn't send it to her. Hmmm."

And I left it at that, knowing who the right person was the next time I had to do that task, wondering still if I messed it up or not.
People are not only welcoming me in this new job, they cut me slack. Ding, ding, ding my inbox rang and there was an email that said, "I don't think you meant to send me this." She signed it with a happy face. And I could write back, "You're so right! I didn't."

There was a time when perfectionism hounded me so relentlessly that I'd have experienced a nose dive in self esteem as soon as the mistake had been revealed. I am so thankful I can grin and learn from it and carry on to other things.

Tomorrow is full of interesting new people to meet and tasks to do.
But this is today. And it's been full and satisfying.

2 comments:

steveroni said...

Oh...Hope, that's exactly how our program works. It teaches us to not take ourselves too seriously. It took me SO long to learn that. I take that back, I 'learned' it right away, just could not IMPLEMENT it-- for years!

Unknown said...

Yay for you- Getting over perfectionism takes a lot of effort, doesn't it? I enjoyed reading your post because I had a less than stellar day at my church job this last Sunday morning, and I can live with that. I don't have to beat myself up and feel awful, just keep moving along.