Hello,
It's me,
Delia Bates,
Writer,
Professor,
Teacher,
Coach,
And a proud Marylander and rideshare driver extraordinaire here in the United States.
As of this writing,
I have a perfect score on one of my driver rideshare apps.
When you start rideshare,
You start with a perfect score,
A juicy five out of five.
The perfectionist in me was all aglow because that got my attention.
I've always been a little bit of an overachiever,
Another trait often related to perfectionism.
Like so many others,
I never thought I'd drive a rideshare,
But it was a way for me to get out of the house and earn money immediately.
When it was first brought up to me,
I was adamantly against it.
But when my husband,
The one who brought it up to me,
Came to me one day and said that if we wanted to keep the lights on,
An extra $200 better come our way.
I knew I had two weeks to do it,
And I agreed to do it.
In my brand new car,
Not even a year old,
I turned into a rideshare fiend.
Picking up people was not as bad as I thought it would be.
I typically drive from about five in the morning until one in the afternoon.
I've been informed by other rideshare drivers that this is the best time to drive.
It was a hot summer that year,
But not too much to see much of what the D.
C.
Metropolitan area had to offer.
It helped that a friend of mine was also doing rideshare,
But she primarily drove in the evenings where I preferred mornings.
I was given a rider one day that was not where she was supposed to be.
This happens often with rideshare.
Usually when both parties are determined to meet,
You go out of your way to be as pleasant as you can in a frustrating situation.
Anyway,
Myself and this young person went back and forth about her location.
I knew she wasn't where she was supposed to be because I have eyes.
By the time I found her,
She'd got in the back seat with a sharp snap of the door,
Letting me know that the situation was beneath her anyway,
And practically swooned,
Letting me know by her discomfort that good help was so hard to find.
I guess so,
Since if she'd taken just one more minute finding the car,
I would have canceled the ride.
Let someone else deal with this foolish woman,
I thought.
A woman that seemed to hate me on sight.
I have no idea why this is,
But it's one of my pet peeves in life and something I've endured more than once.
People that just seem to hate me on sight.
What I regret is I let myself get all turned around when again,
I should have been focused on the other riders that were grateful for a cool ride on a hot summer day.
When I went home that night and went over the rides that I had done during the day,
I came to realize that I had lost my five-star rating.
It was now a 4.
9.
With rideshare at the time,
It was way harder to report your feelings about a rider than it is now.
And since I wasn't really into rideshare anyway,
I decided it was time to hang up my keys,
And I did for two years.
I let not having a perfect score and a hateful person stop me from two years of rideshare,
Hurting my wallet and leaving many of what I thought were my ladies waiting for rides that weren't me.
Remember your why,
My listener.
It comes from your deepest soul.
Pay attention to her and not the haters.
I know it feels sometimes that the haters are winning,
But they will only claim the final victory if we give it to them.
It's been my experience that their own toxicity will eventually catch up with them.
In the meantime,
We need to keep on driving and be aware,
Which leads me to my second point.
Resist the urge to compare your work to others,
Especially in the early stages.
Look to someone that is kind of on the outer rim of your circle to give you feedback.
If it's something you really need,
A support system is always essential.
But sometimes people that are close to us are going to be almost as scared as we are for us to fail.
This is fair,
Since if we do fail,
They are the support team.
But if perfectionism is riding you hard,
You need every reason to move forward.
And sometimes people need to see you get over some of the initial hurdles before they can get excited as you are and help you move forward.
Number three,
Always celebrate yourself for getting started and making the first attempt.
I'm a licensed appraiser in the state of Maryland.
When I began filing,
Filling out the official forms,
One of my very dear friends that I attended some of our initial appraisal classes with was generous enough to offer to train me.
She'd become more experienced than myself over the years due to the fact that she went right into the business of doing,
Let's say,
Traditional appraisals.
I primarily used what I learned to do real estate investing and to become an assessor for the state of Maryland.
So while we started out on the same footing,
Our professional experiences diverged down to very different paths.
Time went on and my training with the state came to an end,
And teachers in my county got a significant raise about this time.
So it made going back to teaching very enticing.
I returned to teaching via a small public school in Prince George's County.
After a few years,
Unfortunately,
I found myself burnt out again to the point where eventually I was in front of my first psychiatrist,
Who made it quite plain via charts and some straight talk therapy that if I did not stop teaching,
Like yesterday,
Then I'd find myself on a forced vacation,
Courtesy of the hospital psych ward.
So again,
I returned to my other love,
Real estate.
But I'd still need to learn those forms.
Lucky for me,
As mentioned previously,
I was blessed with a talented friend that was willing to help.
Talented she is,
Patient she is not.
Her reports are precise,
Clean,
And dare I say,
Perfect?
Now,
I know my strengths.
In fact,
She nicknamed me Diligent Delia after she saw my initial cracks at filling out the forms.
I am well-planned,
Tenacious,
And do my best to be kind.
I'm also a bit of a dreamer,
And my desire to review and mull over each detail can make my work,
For lack of a better word,
Slow.
My work was slow,
Especially when I'm learning something new.
Especially when I'm doing something for someone I have a great deal of respect for.
So between the two of us,
It was a recipe for conflict.
So who's wrong and who's right?
The more detailed among us,
Or the big picture folks among us?
Well,
I'll tell you who backed down that day.
Me,
Of course.
I was hyper aware that this clever lady was going out of her way to teach me something that would allow me to shake the shackles of the school system off forever.
So whatever she said would carry the day.
But in reality,
We were both right.
You cannot move forward without vision,
And you can't do anything that lasts without people who attend to details.
So when you feel perfectionism knocking at your door,
It may be that you've gotten stuck on one side or the other.
Maybe you're even thinking,
Gosh,
There are so many people doing it.
Will they be interested in what I have to offer?
On the other hand,
Did I really think through all of the pitfalls?
Yes to both.
Check off both,
But obsess over neither.
Without movement,
That is publication,
A viable prototype,
Or a finished presentation.
You cannot truly get your voice heard.
And at the end of the day,
That is the tragic loss.
Thank you so much for listening.
I hope these words are beneficial to you.
I hope these words have inspired you and helped you move forward.
Trust me,
Your potential is enormous,
Immeasurable.
Don't deny yourself the success that comes with taking a leap of faith and landing on your feet knowing that,
Hey,
It may not be perfect,
But it's yours.
You did that.
And dang it,
If you want to,
You can do it again.
It feels like winning the lottery.
But unlike the lottery,
Now that you know what to do,
You will be able to look forward to this feeling over and over again because you are in control.
You are,
And you will not be robbed of your joy due to anxiety or the need for things to be perfect.
At the end of the day,
That's what perfectionism really does.
It robs us all of a little more joy in life.
So for all of the artists in every genre,
In every way,
Take back your voice.
Take back your freedom today.
I know that I'm ready.
I hope you are too.
So let's do this together.
