the uncomfortable gap between expectations and reality

on perfectionism and internal pressure

I return to my desk in the guest room after almost 5 months away. Flip on the lamp, set my coffee down, power on my work laptop. The routine is familiar still. When I finally connect, my Outlook inbox tells me I have 568 unread emails. Sigh.

As usual, my expectations for going back to work were high, because I’ll never learn. I imagined everything coming together and clicking again instantly. I thought doing my highly technical job again after so long would be like riding a bike, you never really forget how to do it. Well, it did not happen quite like that.

After a week of reorienting myself to my role, I am exhausted. My brain hurts. There’s about a million things to do around the house. I have a job and am making money again … These are objectively positive things. So why did the uncertainty and stagnation of 19 weeks away feel more comfortable than growth and adjustment?

Unfortunately, I do not have an answer to that question. I don’t have much actually — no productivity angle, no “how I did it,” no broader lesson. I can posit that maybe being furloughed is less stressful than a demanding full-time job, or stressful in different ways. Or, maybe growth is inherently uncomfortable because it exposes our weaknesses and forces us to confront aspects of ourselves we may not like.

What I do have to share are honest observations on a tiring week returning to full-time employment and thoughts on my own perfectionism, without definite conclusions.

where the magic happens (my work desk)

One week before I was due to return, in preparation for my first week back, I created a syllabus for myself. I am nothing if not an overachieving perfectionist.

I outlined every single topic I wanted to brush up on, with detailed reading material and quizzes included. And then, somewhere between going across the state for the weekend and catching up on everything around the house I wouldn’t have as much time for anymore … I abandoned the syllabus. Which naturally left me already feeling like a failure, prior to even sitting down at my desk on Monday morning.

I put a lot of high expectations and pressure on myself to be perfect. Not just with my job, but life in general. I give myself very little room for error. I need to show up prepared, preferably early, with a notebook and pen in hand and my glasses perched on my nose. Completely ready to go. But once again, that’s not exactly how it happened on my first week back.

Monday was a day of extreme anxiety for me. I was so worried about absorbing all of the new information being thrown at me, I nearly gave myself a panic attack. I assumed I wouldn’t be able to do this after all. So much had changed, and I basically needed to get reacquainted with how to do my job. I gave myself no grace, getting one practice question wrong meant I was immediately a failure and clearly couldn’t hack it in my field any longer.

Around Tuesday, I realized I wasn’t actually a failure and the sky wouldn’t come crashing down if I wasn’t personally holding it up. Knowing a pity party wouldn’t help me do well like I desperately craved, I shifted my focus to learning from my mistakes and continuously trying to improve, instead of beating myself up for not being as perfect as I thought I could be. By Wednesday morning, I was already mentally and emotionally exhausted from the whiplash of the week thus far.

The rest of the work week continued along much the same, trying to learn and remember everything, absorbing the updated information, trying to just do my best. On Friday, I got the news that I passed my reintroduction assessment (!!!) and am officially back to doing my job. Of course, now I’m anxious about the coming week. Again, my brain is telling me I need to be as perfect as possible.

I’m trying to put less pressure on myself. I want to succeed, yes, most of us do in some capacity. But I don’t want to see it as starkly black and white anymore. I want to give myself some compassion and know that it’s okay to be wrong, make a mistake, or to not know something. I’m in my 30s, and this is still something I have to remind myself of everyday. It’s okay to not be perfect.

As I mentioned earlier, I don’t have a lesson to share or a solid takeaway from this. I just wanted to recap my first week back to working full-time, and the anxiety I experienced along with it. Maybe someone else will relate to the feelings of wanting to be perfect at something — and the annoying realization that you don’t measure up like you assumed.

Feel free to sound off about perfectionism, internal pressure and high standards in the comments!

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