How to be Imperfect in 12 Steps

One of the questions I get asked most often on this blog is, “How in the world do you get everything done?” I suppose it’s inevitable since I seem to be everywhere: this blog, Twitter, Facebook, my business, blah blah blah. But if only you could see how I miserably juggle everything and how incredibly imperfect my life is, you’d realize that like everyone else, I keep my head above water only barely, and sometimes not even then. I do occasionally have to dunk my head, hold my breath and hope that there aren’t any sharks in the vicinity.

Herewith, my secret to being impossibly, happily, sometimes unhappily imperfect as I juggle all the things that I do:

1. I don’t get enough sleep. Biologically and psychologically, I need at least nine hours, but I get that much only once every few weeks. Realistically I feel blessed if I can hit seven.
2. I don’t eat as well as I should. I would love to be able to follow Mireille Guiliano’s French-style diet to the letter, but I would say that half of our meals are already precooked (i.e., frozen) and come in a box or jar. We do most of our shopping at Whole Foods and choose primarily organic meals, of course, but processed is processed.
3. I spend most of my working hours in T-shirts, sweats and/or jeans. When I have meetings with clients or am attending networking events, yes, I don a suit, stockings, the works, but when I’m at my home office, it’s all about comfort and whatever the first thing is that I pull out of my dresser drawer.
4. I rarely wear makeup. The only time I do is–again–when I have meetings or networking events to attend. Otherwise, I don’t bother.
5. I rarely do anything with my hair but let it air-dry. Ditto with #4, i.e., only when I have important events to go to. Even then, I apply a leave-in conditioning creme (Garnier Fructis is the best), blow-dry it for five minutes, and voila! I have a very simple hairstyle that takes minutes to maintain when necessary.
6. I don’t have kids by choice. I have a dog that I treat like my baby half the time, but it’s easy enough to take him to a local daycare when I have a full day of work outside the home. Sometime B. and I may decide to have kids of our own, but we’re not in a big hurry.
7. Self-care is a priority, but not the top priority. I do want to work on this, especially since I do think that self-care should be a top priority (not the top, but certainly up there). Women business owners and executives in particular seem to be held to a higher standard than men when it comes to personal grooming, so showing up to a networking event in a golf shirt, blazer and Dockers pants is perfectly acceptable for a man but a definite no-no for a woman. I need and want to have manicures more often, especially with the beating I usually inflict on the digits as I type, work out and do housework, but lately it seems to happen only every few weeks. (Although I did finally get one today! My cuticles are eternally grateful!)
8. My novel has been sadly neglected the last few weeks. This, I definitely must change. I’ve four h
   

   Multi-tasking knows no age.

   undred-plus pages in the hopper that I refuse to abandon.

9. I haven’t seen my two-year-old niece in 3 weeks, and I don’t see my friends nearly as often as I’d like. In my defense, though, the few times I’ve tried to organize even just a coffee with friends, they never seem to be able to make it.
10. I don’t call my mom nearly as often as I’d like. Or as often as she’d like.
11. I eat way too many M&Ms for my own good. Apparently, there is such a thing as too many M&Ms.
12. My apartment, while neat, gets the bare minimum of cleaning. We keep up with our housekeeping, but by no means will we ever grace the pages of Real Simple.

This is why this blog is called My Inner French Girl, I suppose. My actual self deviates so much from the model of the impeccably dressed French woman with the neat, organized closet, perfect diet and even more perfect figure. I’m under no illusion that the two twains shall ever meet, but I must say, even just looking at a brilliantly composed photograph of, say, a cup of tea and a madeleine or macaron is enough to make me feel so much better about my life. Something about the ideal of the French woman’s world–and I say ideal because I’m aware that even most French women would be hard-pressed to admit that they themselves live that world–inspires, as unattainable as it may be. Simply knowing that such a world exists, somewhere, pacifies my stressed out mind.

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/richardgiles/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

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