Have you made yourself proud today?

Obviously with the pandemic (and just normally), we deserve to take it easy from time to time.
It is possible to be unproductive and still make yourself proud!
But I found it easier to fall asleep at night if I’ve ticked off a task, helped another person or surprised myself in some way.
How about you, are you going to sleep easy tonight?

“The greatest barrier to success is the fear of failure.” 
– Sven Goran Eriksson

I constantly have a great THING to be done: be it my tax returns, university applications or at the moment editing my short film.
The great THING always has to be dragged out over many months and cannot simply be tackled. Instead, it has to be inspected and planned far ahead. And when I reach a hurdle, I end up taking the day (or week) off.
Often, the THING has to be perfect. It becomes more than – it becomes a representation of myself.
In my head, it’s creative, perfect, flawless, so how could it possibly ever live up to that?

“Don’t think, just do.“ – Horace

So in tune with self-care preachers, I do not require of myself to be conventionally productive every day.
Have you journalled today? Done 10 minutes of meditation?
Have I messaged a friend to check up on them? Smiled at a stranger who crossed me on the street?
Additionally, it would be great if I got to do the tiniest amount of work on the great big THING.
After all, if I do 15min every day, eventually, I have to get there, right?
But even when I do, there is no great sense of relief or pride.
There is only the search for the next THING to torture myself over.

“If you spend too much time thinking about a thing,
you’ll never get it done.” – Bruce Lee

I speak a lot about giving up the need for external validation on here.
But is needing certain actions in order to feel satisfied with myself not also a case of external validation? Am I not still dependent on my environment to facilitate whatever I demand of myself?
Ideally, I would like to reach the great calmness of the Buddhist monks I met in Asia.
But even some of them got great fits of anger, one ranting to me about the resident nun for a good 30min!
Maybe I am already closer to them that I might have thought.