THE PERSON I WAS GOING TO BE

I was thinking about the differences between the person that I am, and the person that I always want to be. Every morning, I think about how I want to be - and every day around 10 a.m., I'm disgusted with myself for not being that person.

I realized something a little while ago, though. I realized (amazing that it took so long, as it really is so simple that it should've been obvious) that I'm much too hard on myself, and rather short-sighted. Or maybe, actually, too long-sighted would be more accurate. Sometimes, I AM the person I want to be. It just never occurred to me before that it was a moment-to-moment thing. It always seemed to me, for instance, that Martha Stewart was ALWAYS Martha Stewart - she never had to open her door to a drop-in guest and find herself without freshly-folded linen napkins scented with lavender, and there were always just-picked rose petals scattered across her pillows at any given moment.

I realized that was completely ridiculous. Martha Stewart most certainly is not ALWAYS Martha Stewart - perhaps mostly she is, and always when given enough notice that you're coming to visit, she is; but she has times when she's not the person she wants to be.

Now, this might be a pretty rudimentary observation but the implications it had on the success I attribute to myself was huge. I really didn't give myself much credit. It was like I was doing okay, but then I lost all my past okay-ness with each failure. As if you either ARE or you ARE NOT successful in being who you want to be, instead of SOMETIMES you are, and SOMETIMES you're not. When I felt successful - I felt damn near omnipotent, as if I were always successful, all my life. When I ran out of toilet paper or snapped at someone or felt some really 'juvenile' sense of disappointment - I'd feel like my entire life I'd been unsuccessful at being who I want to be.

The real bitch of it is that the Person I Want To Be is a script being constantly re-written. New, Improved Versions get handed to my Consciousness daily, delivered by 8:00 a.m. before I've had too much time to do much damage. Then, I'd feel like I had NO CLUE who I was, or who I wanted to be. What, I'm closing in on the 50th year and I still don't know who I want to be?

Well, that was ridiculous too. Ok, so at least I've got this part all figured out - for the FIRST 48.8 years of my life, I was ridiculous. For the rest of my life, I'm going to just consider myself a success or failure at being the person I want to be, on a moment-by-moment basis.