The sun is shining bright on the landscape this morning. These last two days, I have been witness to some patches of blue sky through the clouds. We have just experienced extreme smoke in our skies, blocking the sun, creating a suppressive and balmy heat, and forcing us indoors for over a week. On day four or five, I could feel a difference in my lungs. Much of the smoke was from chemical burn of cars and houses etc., along with the smoke from the burning of the natural landscape on much of the west coast. On the sixth day, the sun did finally poke through the thick haze, while shining with an eery pinkish orange. This morning we had a thick fog, but it burned off like it should, and one can go outside and breathe in the clean air of the Salish Sea and soak in Vitamin D from our much missed sun.

I have been preoccupied with having a 48 hour flu, and then having to take a 12 hour off-island trip for a dental appointment that left me feeling drained and exhausted. I attempted to move about my day in the normal fashion yesterday, doing chores, going for a nice walk; (during the smoke as it got worse, I started exercising indoors); yet, I found myself feeling weepy and fatigued by the afternoon. At my support meeting yesterday, I discussed how I had glimmers of hope for the changing of some destructive habits that I still have around smoking and eating at night. I also shared how grateful I am to be doing so well, while living with the very debilitating disease of schizoaffective disorder. I do not usually realize this, because I have been plagued with high expectations the majority of my life. For decades, I have been striving and achieving, despite suffering greatly with mental illness. In my 12 step program, I have approached becoming ready to have perfectionism removed from my life, as well as asking God to actually remove this character flaw. This is causing me to feel empowered to try things that I had given up on, such as playing guitar, while getting more done that I need to, such as getting on the roof and hosing off the roof of the porch, or cleaning and vacuuming my car. There is an ease that has entered my life around doing the chores that I long to do, because there is no expectation around how thoroughly I do them, and no shame about the fact that these tasks are not already done. I am more likely to accept the fact that I choose to play my guitar on strings that need to be replaced that fall out of tune too easily, rather than saying to myself that I can’t play unless I change said strings. Everything becomes easier.

I had no idea the extent to which perfectionism was crippling my life. When you place all of this upon the background of my disposition with having schizoaffective disorder; instead of practicing patting myself on the back for pressing on with life despite my emotional, mental, and medication challenges, I would only see that I was achieving even less while being mentally ill, and condemn myself further. I would be even harder on myself. I would cringe when Steve would cheer me on for doing something as simple as taking out the recycle and the trash. I couldn’t take in that love. High expectations and perfectionism was keeping warmth and self-love from entering my life. While living with the cold edges of these high expectations, I could only see that I could do better.

I am not completely in the clear, but I am beginning to see and feel the sweet relief of letting go of high expectations. I think it would be a good idea to include in my morning prayers, the sixth and seventh step prayers of being ready to have God remove perfectionism from my life, and then asking in prayer that God gift me the ability to let go. My psychiatrist is regularly telling me that it is time to give myself a pat on the back. My therapist has even said that she wishes she could bottle me up and share me with the rest of her patients. Often, I have let these words go strait over my head. Well, I am ready to let these words soak in now. Lord, please help me do this. Amen.