alpharaposa | Ongoing lessons

I'm learning a lot at this job.. and not all of it has to do with taxes or mortgages. I'm now to the point where I've worked long enough to accumulate mistakes. We all make some, even the best of us. But now, they begin to show up. If I had worked here merely two months or so (a typical 'temp only' time), somebody else would have had to fix them long after I had vanished.

I'm trained as a perfectionist. Mistakes cost me a lot as a kid, so I avoided them like the plague. I hated finding them, or having others find them. People tormented me if they found I had *gasp* made an error.

But the people at work don't expect me to be a superhuman perfect machine. They do expect me to work to clean up any mistakes I might make. And so I do. I'm learning to make mistakes without cringing in fear of punishment afterwards. I'm learning to clean them up without wallowing in paralysis and guilt. I'm learning to stay and continue working with people even after they have proof that I'm not perfect.

I'm learning to juggle multiple responsibilities. I'm learning how to tell people that I have too much and need help. In other words, I'm learning a lot on how to work with other people, a skill I didn't get to develop much in school.

I still have a long way to go, I think. I like being the kind of person people think they can turn to for help. But part of working with others is to also turn to them for help, and to sometimes admit that I don't know.