11 Signs You Are An Imperfect Perfectionist

By

1. You set three alarms every morning, vividly imagining all the things you can accomplish between 6 a.m and 7:30 a.m, when you have to leave for work. Nevertheless, you will roll over and hit snooze after every alarm—only dragging yourself out of bed at 7:20 with enough time to put on some mascara and your pants.

2. You love watching YouTube exercise videos and workout demonstrations where moms lift 25 pound weights while a toddler screams in the background. You start trying your own routine—but your resolve gives out at the sixteenth burpee. In defeat, you retreat to the kitchen for Doritos.

3. Speaking of food, you have high ideals for your diet. You have probably tried the all-liquid cleanse and various vegetarian, vegan, and low-carb diets. However, when your friend invites you to dinner at the Cheesecake Factory, the raspberry drizzle on top of the gourmet dessert is irresistible.

4. After that horrible night at prom, you promised yourself that you would learn to dance before your wedding. But despite getting 30% off five dance lessons at the local ballroom, you only show up for one class and then claim to have twisted your ankle. At your friend’s wedding later in the year, you sit down in the back of the room and chide yourself for wasting that opportunity.

5. You faithfully make a schedule every day. Work until 4, chores until 5, dinner at 6, reading old classics at 6:30, crocheting an afghan at 7. Nonetheless, as soon as your tired feet reach home, you collapse onto the couch to watch two hours of Netflix. Next thing you know, you’re folding laundry at 11 pm and only reading a page of To Kill a Mockingbird before bed.

6. You promised your roommate that you would only go to the mall to buy new work socks. You even made a budget this month to keep the bills in check. But on the way to JC Penny, you pass a sale at Maurices, half-off frappuccinos at Starbucks, and some cute home décor in Hallmark. You return home five hours later with two empty plastic cups, a poster of your favorite band, and a whole season’s worth of sandals. Of course, you forgot the socks.

7. You know what you’re looking for in a partner. You have a list of character qualities and regular act as a relationship counselor to your friends—with advice you received from Internet dating articles, of course. Nevertheless, you fall for people who are the opposite of your aspirations. If your list says “tall, brown eyes, loves fishing, well-budgeted, and wants eight kids”, you will end up talking to someone with blue eyes who has twenty credit card bills and hates babies.

8. You made a bucket list when you were thirteen—since you were fifteen you have been telling everyone that you will soon be buying tickets to see your favorite band in concert. However, when they go on tour less than two hours from your home, you manage to come down with a headache and claim that the drive is too much to bear. Instead, you settle for live videos of their hit song on Youtube.

9. “This semester will be different,” you promised yourself. For the first three days, you stay up past midnight editing papers and studying for a world history test. Three weeks later, you are reading three pages of the textbook a night and hoping that skipping two essays won’t affect your grade that much. After receiving a C on your final, you sob in the bathroom for half an hour.

10. Your room is supposed to be clean. After all, you claim to have OCD and an obsession with the way your clothes are arranged according to the color spectrum. However, one day you wake up and realize that your quarters look like the Indominus Rex from Jurassic World stomped through. Apparently your OCD is limited to the fact that red and green shirts cannot hang by each other in the closet.

11. As an imperfect perfectionist, you have high ideals, but sometimes laziness and procrastination make you miss out on life. You have plenty of regrets from your imperfections but also victories from your hard-core beliefs.

Someday, you plan to stop learning things the hard way. But so far, you have had great adventures despite your flaws—and you have learned that sometimes having things figured out is not the best way to learn.

(And deep down, you know that there is at least part of an imperfect perfectionist inside each one of us).