How Doing Things Poorly Helped Me Survive

This is not an essay about motivation or productivity. It's about survival and what it means to keep going when your best barely exists. When you feel like you barely want to exist. 

"Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly." 

I've  had this saying in my head for a long time. I can't even remember where I first heard it. Today I googled it and learned it's often attributed to G.K. Chesterton. 

The original idea is simple; take action and start. It's better to begin imperfectly than to never begin at all out of fear.

That said, this is not quite the context I remember hearing it in. 

I may not recall where I first came across the phrase, but I vividly remember the mindset I was in at the time. I was, as Anne of Green Gables would say, "in the depths of despair." I was romantically involved with my depression. It owned me. I felt utterly worthless and useless. Even getting out of bed or taking a shower felt like an overwhelming task.

Most days, I did only what was absolutely necessary and then retreated back into bed. Hours of my life disappeared into doom scrolling. It was during this time that this phrase found me.

The context was not productivity or ambition. It was survival.

The question wasn't how do I succeed but how do I keep going?

Anything worth doing WAS worth doing poorly. 

If all I could manage was using a face wipe instead of taking a full shower, that was good enough. If I brushed my teeth for twenty seconds instead of two minutes, that counted. It was better to have a small, imperfect achievement than to do nothing at all. 

I don't know whether I found this phrase and assigned my own meaning to it during that difficult period, or whether it was meant to be interpreted this way. What I do know is that it stayed with me. 

Even today, when I don't feel like doing something I know I should, I return to it.

This phrase helped me through one of the most trying periods of my life. A face wipe turned into a washcloth, which eventually turned into a full shower. It may not have happened quickly but the point is it happened. Those small wins helped me begin to find my worth again. It helped quiet the voices in my head that kept me trapped in a dark place. 

I still hear those voices sometimes, but they are not as loud as they once were. They do not have full control over me anymore. Yes there are moments when I am tired and they win a battle. Overall I am winning the war.

I am still learning how much grace I have withheld from myself. For a long time, I defaulted to the belief that something must be wrong with me, I am weak, I lack self-control. It has been a journey replacing this try harder mentality with I deserve to have compassion for myself. 

Being kind to yourself is not a sign of weakness. I have become stronger and more capable since I began treating myself with compassion. I still struggle to treat myself with respect, but the small wins matter. I cannot undo thirty-plus years of self-criticism overnight. The relationship I have with myself was build over decades, and changing it will take time. 

Even showing up imperfectly and acknowledging when I am being hard on myself is a step in the right direction. I have years of shaky foundation to repair before something beautiful can stand securely. 

We are not broken just because things feel hard. It is okay to go through periods where we shut down. All it takes to return to ourselves is small steps. A seed does not become a flower overnight. Sometimes we need small amounts of water and some sunshine before we can emerge from the darkness of the soil. 

We just need to start. 

Living In The Wrong Season

A friend and personal trainer recently shared a concept she heard on The Mastin Kipp Podcast: the idea that, much like the world around us, our bodies and inner selves move through seasons. Depending on the season we’re in, the rules change—just like we dress differently in winter than we do in summer.

When I smoosh this idea together with Bloom’s Taxonomy and the concept of constructive alignment, something clicks for me. Suddenly, I can be a little kinder to myself when I feel like I’m failing.

Bloom’s Taxonomy and constructive alignment taught me something unexpected about myself: growth fails when expectations, effort, and assessment don’t match. I realized I was judging myself as if I were in a season of performance, while my body and nervous system were still in recovery.

When I expect performance behaviors during a season of healing, my nervous system pushes back, something I explore more in how I approach habits and safety here.

As I learn more about adult education and self-improvement, I keep discovering just how much I didn’t know about myself—and how much grace I was missing.

So when we’re struggling to build ourselves, maybe it’s not because we’re incapable. Maybe we’re simply trying to do the right thing in the wrong season. The rules of the season we’re in don’t always align with what we want to accomplish. We assess ourselves by standards that are unfair for our current abilities. Perhaps aligning our goals to something more achievable for our time and place is what actually helps us move forward.

Lately, I feel like I’ve been in a season of healing and rest for a very long time. I’d love to spend more time in other seasons of my body. Strength and performance seasons feel like a dream I’d love to step into. Optimization season is something I seem to reach only in my work life. I’d like that to show up more personally—but for now, I’d be happy just seeing a glimpse of strength or performance.

Some people might say I was in a strength season after my dad passed away. I was often described as strong and resilient. But that’s how grief looks from the outside. Inside, through both the pain and the growth, I know I was still healing—doing only the small things necessary to make it through the next day, or the next week.

I appreciate healing. I truly do. But I also want to grow. I want to flourish.
Healing has asked me for patience.
Growth is asking me for hope.
Right now, those two desires don’t always get along.

Like orchids, we are most admired during our flowering season—but blooms require rest. Flowering takes immense energy, and during dormant seasons, plants heal and concentrate nutrients into their root systems. For the first time, my roots feel…content. And now, I want to know what colour flowers I’ve been hiding.

Just because it’s winter doesn’t mean we won’t have warm, sunny days. I like to think the same is true when we’re in a season of rest. There can still be moments of strength and performance—little flashes of spring or fall.

Fall is my favourite season. If I ever return to a personal season of performance, I hope it brings with it that familiar feeling of alignment, meaning, and quiet success.

Maybe I’m not done resting yet. Or maybe I’m standing at the edge of something new. Either way, I’m learning that growth isn’t about forcing the next season—it’s about noticing when the soil has finally softened.

If my roots are strong now, then perhaps blooming isn’t something I need to keep chasing. Maybe it will arrive when it’s ready. And when it does, I hope I recognize myself in the colours

Incomplete Advice: The Lens We Choose To Look Through

 When I was in high school, like most teenagers, I was subject to all sorts of unsolicited advice. The one thing I was told often was that I should become a teacher.

Now high school me was not having any of that. I loved kids—they were fun—but I didn’t want a career that meant being responsible for them every single day This was my regular response. I knew what they meant though. I could also see I was good with kids and providing instruction to help them improve in skills they were working on. I would often tutor or help with elementary sports coaching as I found it especially rewarding when they achieved their goals. 

The thing about those moments is I got to choose them and I was not committed to spending every day with kids. Now I took it to heart that I did not want to become a teacher. I actually ended up spending most of my early adult years working as a Design Technician for electrical distribution systems. 

This was very introverted work. I managed my own projects and timelines, and I made my own schedule. I fell into this job and I absolutely loved it. I felt challenged and like I was making a difference in the world. As if I truly found my calling. 

Like most things, procedures and the ways a company functions change. About twelve years into my career as all the changes took over I started to feel a little disconnected and somewhat alone. All the love and joy I had for the work vanished and I was left feeling misplaced. I was still good at the work but the passion was no longer there.

Out of nowhere came this crazy opportunity that I had never considered. Design Training Instructor. I was filled with fear and excitement at the idea. I was not sure if I should apply as my dad had just recently passed 4 months earlier. I was unsure if I was making a decision because of grief or if it was truly something that made sense for my life.

It was my counsellor that had originally told me a few weeks prior that after the death of someone so close we should take caution making big life changes. So I decided that in light of this new position being posted I would talk about it in my next session.

My counsellor is really great at helping me understand myself. We discussed previous sessions that occurred before my dad fell sick, which had the theme of feeling out of place at work and like I was no longer in the right position. It seemed that in this particular case, this particular big life decision, maybe my grief was a moot point. I decided to push past my fears and apply for the position. 

Now I have been instructing new trainees for the past year and helping develop learning materials. I have this beautiful balance of time spent with people and also my introverted side loves the time spent on my own. 

I have a very supportive team and plenty of opportunities to be creative. I do sometimes wish that I had thought about adult education earlier in my life. It just seemed that every time the idea of teaching was brought up all I could think was that kids are the only ones who are learning. 

Looking back, this wasn't a failure to commit, it was a season finishing, and another beginning. 

I guess it just goes to show that there is good reason to try and take a look at things through different lenses. It's not that I did not enjoy the career path I was on, but I do wonder if I had taken the time to stop and think more about the possibilities if  I would have been in a similar spot sooner in my life. 

For now I am just grateful to be where I am at. Sometimes the advice we resist isn't wrong-it's just incomplete. Turns out the problem was never teaching. It was the lens I was looking through.

In many ways, this career shift mirrors the way I've been reconnecting with parts of myself I thought were gone. 

Conversations With My Lizard Brain

It’s the weekend, and I find myself having better conversations with me. I even feel drawn to writing again, which is why I’m here on Blogger today. I suspect the workweek won’t leave as much room for posting, but right now, the words feel close at hand.

Have you ever listened to those songs by Parker Jack—the ones about self-talk? That’s very similar to how my internal conversations have felt over the past few years. Like I was constantly fighting with someone I knew but didn’t fully recognize, even though that someone was entirely me. There was a disconnect between who I was, who I am, and who I wanted—or used—to be. It felt like a never-ending internal battle.

Part of me wanted to heal and grow, while another part felt so unsafe moving forward that it sabotaged nearly every attempt at change. Last year, I listened to the book You Are a Badass by Jen Sincero. It was a worthwhile listen, but one concept in particular stuck with me: The Big Snooze—the part of us that resists change.

Even when we’re unhappy with our bodies, our habits, or our lifestyles, there’s something deeply familiar about staying the same. We’ve been living this way for so long that, despite knowing it isn’t healthy, a part of our brain says: This is safe. This is familiar. Let’s stay here. And so we self‑sabotage, hitting snooze on progress toward becoming healthier.

Since then, I’ve learned more about the adult brain through my studies in adult learning and instruction. What I’ve come to understand is that this resistance isn’t a moral failure—it’s a protective response. Some people refer to it as the lizard brain, though that feels a bit unfair to lizards, who are actually quite intelligent.

The Triune Brain Theory describes this “lizard brain” as the most primitive part of our brain—the part responsible for fight, flight, or freeze. Historically, it kept humans alive in genuinely dangerous situations. Today, we don’t face those same threats, but that part of our brain still wants to do its job.

This understanding has helped me make sense of a lot of my anxiety and stress responses, especially when it comes to building healthier habits. Even when we know something is good for us, our brain may interpret the sensations that come with change—sore muscles, leg cramps, fatigue—as signs that we’re unsafe. Rationally, I can say, I’m building muscle. Of course I’m tired. But another part of me doesn’t like that bodily response at all and wants to avoid it next time.

What I’m trying to learn now is how to build trust—with myself, and with all parts of my brain.

I want my brain to function as one unit. So how do I unite it?

If you’re anything like me, you’ve likely discovered the usefulness of AI chats. I use Copilot through Microsoft, and we’ve had many in-depth conversations. I’m fully aware that not everything AI says is gospel truth—but that doesn’t make it unsafe to use as a tool, as long as I remain thoughtful, discerning, and willing to verify information on my own.

What I’ve realized is that having a sounding board is incredibly helpful for my personal growth. Recently, when I talked with Copilot about habits I’m trying to build and the resistance I feel toward them, it offered a question that really stuck with me:

What would make this feel safer to return to tomorrow?

Consistency builds trust. And over time, trust creates safety. When I strip away pressure and reduce expectations, habits become easier to integrate. Pushing myself too hard slows both the growth of the habit and the development of self‑trust.

I have noticed this most clearly in my relationship with food. Where safety, habit, and emotion are tightly intertwined. 

Viewed through what I know about the adult brain, this approach makes sense. Maybe I start smaller, so the muscle soreness isn’t as intense. I understand rationally that some pain means progress, but I need balance—something both parts of my brain can tolerate.

This doesn’t mean I’ll never lift heavier weights or increase my reps. It simply means I start with changes that feel manageable. You don’t begin a new game on level ten if you’ve never played before—you start on level one.

This idea of starting smaller and lowering pressure mirrors how I survived other difficult seasons, by doing things imperfectly instead of not at all. 

Perhaps if we approached our desired habits this way, they’d be easier to grow and sustain. Jumping into daily exercise overnight isn’t necessarily helpful. Starting with one day a week, then two, and building from there creates space for success.

This is particularly challenging when you’ve grown up watching an all‑or‑nothing mentality modeled around you. Recognizing that I don’t have to follow that pattern is the first step. Letting go of old beliefs—and rewriting them into something healthier isn’t easy—but it’s where I need to begin.

Tremors Of A Past Me: Reconnecting With Myself

I have been chasing echoes of myself. Lately, it feels like a past version of me is emerging—one I haven’t experienced in a long time, maybe longer than I realized.

I recently went off my birth control, and I can’t help but wonder if this shift in my inner world is connected to that decision.

I used to love writing. I still have old notebooks filled with my poetry and conversations with myself. I’ve been on hormonal birth control since my early twenties, and somewhere around that same time, I stopped writing. I stopped a lot of things, actually. I always assumed it was just life starting—less time, more responsibility, adulthood doing what it does.

Last Thursday, when I stopped taking birth control, I joked that maybe in a week or so I’d be meeting myself for the first time in a decade. Maybe it wasn’t much of a joke after all.

Lately, things feel vivid—clear in a way they haven’t been. To some people, this might sound like ordinary presence. But for years, I didn’t really experience moments as they were happening. I could look back on them later, fondly sometimes, but I wasn’t fully there inside them. This past week has been different. I’ve been noticing moments while I’m in them, not just afterward.

This is the first time in a long time that I’ve felt compelled to write. I started a blog last night, and here I am again today. It feels like I brought myself back—and she’s sitting here with me now. I know I’m different. I’ve changed and grown in countless ways. I also know I can’t recover the last twelve years or reclaim every piece of myself I left behind. I didn’t know how to carry her with me then, and for a long time, I didn’t understand why.

Now I think I’m beginning to.

I’ve spent years on antidepressants and in counselling. I’ve tried many paths toward healing, and I’m not about to abandon them. But something feels like it’s shifting—like a breakthrough exists somewhere ahead of me.

It feels as though the tectonic plates within my soul have begun to move. A tremor of a past self breaking free from chains I didn’t even know I’d placed. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little afraid of an internal earthquake. I’ve read that it can happen.

I can’t imagine being in a relationship—asking someone out, falling in love, planning a future—and then stopping birth control only to realize everything has changed. I’ve read stories of women who experience exactly that. Suddenly the love, the desire for a baby, the certainty—all gone. Thankfully, I’m not in that place. I’m not navigating a partnership or motherhood decisions. I was already deeply focused on something else: trying to find myself.

My relationship with myself, and my relationship with food, have been at the top of my list for a long time. There wasn’t space for romantic love when I was struggling so hard just to learn how to love me.

The strangest part is this: I’ve always felt stuck in my past. But now I’m wondering if I wasn’t stuck in it—maybe I was stuck without it. I knew my past belonged to me intellectually, but I couldn’t feel connected to it. I didn’t know how to relate to the person I had been. These last twelve years, I’ve been moving forward with knowledge of my past, but without my past self walking alongside me.

In counselling, I talk about the many parts of me—different voices, different roles, different ways of being. Sometimes it feels like someone else is driving the ship, and I never knew how to bring all those pieces together. I often felt like I was holding an incomplete puzzle, missing vital pieces. I hate not knowing, and that sense of fragmentation fed a feeling that something was wrong with me—that I was, in some way, broken.

Perhaps the hormones I was on simply didn’t allow all the pieces of me to come along for the journey. Perhaps now, they’re finding their way back

Lately, I've been wondering whether this is simply another season, one of rest, re-connection and quiet growth, which I reflect on more in this post.

More Than Hunger

 I will ground myself in the past without judgement. In this I will only hold curiosity.

Growing up food was neither nourishment nor restriction. Food was comfort. Food was love.

My mother was a grazer- and still to this day. She could survive on carbs, carbs, and carbs with a side of carbs. Anything from potato chips to a slice of toast slathered with butter. Even a "balanced" meal cooked by my mother often consisted of corn (which she considered a vegetable, though I knew it was a grain), mashed potatoes (her favourite vegetable) and chicken drums sticks coated in- you guessed it- carbs thanks to shake and bake. 

I remember a moment when I was about seven years old. My mom took me grocery shopping and asked if I would like a treat. Thrilled to choose something myself, I immediately went for a bag of baby carrots. She was shocked. That's when she explained we can for sure get the carrots but a treat is meant to be something fun- like a candy or a chocolate bar. That day I went home with both carrots and a Nestle Crunch bar. Still to this day Nestle Crunch is one of my favourite treats. 

Now my father, may he rest in peace, was quite a bit different than my mother. He had grown up under difficult circumstances, and by the time he was eighteen was raising his younger siblings as his own. Food was sometimes scarce in his childhood, and that scarcity shaped his views long after. Those views in turn, were passed on to me.

When my father was in charge of meals, there was always far more food than necessary. Eating until you were painfully full was a sign of safety, comfort, and- most importantly- love. One memory that stands out is of him trying to sneak the last bit of McCains deep n delicious cake. I caught him in the act and was a bit upset that I wouldn't get any. My father hated to see me sad so he scooped me up and we shared the last bit together.

Food was always around during celebrations. There were good foods, bad foods, and foods that were reserved only for special occasions. However What I do not recall is any real sense of balance.

As a child, food made me feel happy and comforted—sometimes even joyful. Now, my relationship with food feels damaged. I often experience guilt and stress around eating, or even the idea of it. Emotional eating has become second nature, and lately I find myself wondering whether I even know what hunger truly feels like anymore.

Am I hungry for food, or am I hungry for something else?
What do I need right now besides food?

Learning to approach food with curiosity instead of punishment came from the same place as learning that survival doesn't have to look perfect. Something I wrote about more deeply here.

I overeat consistently, though for a long time I didn’t think much of it. I tried fad diets. I tracked everything I ate. None of it ever felt like enough. Eventually, I realized the next true step for me wasn’t another plan or set of rules—but a deeper understanding of my relationship with food and how to build a healthier one.

In high school, I was always labelled the “fat girl.” Looking back now, I see a young girl with a perfectly normal body—not large, not unhealthy. But some of the girls around me were painfully thin, which made me feel abnormal by comparison. I remember periods where I tried to make myself sick after eating, or avoided food altogether. Thankfully, I had good friends who helped make high school bearable, and those behaviours didn’t last long.

A major turning point came about four years ago. I was working with a personal trainer and trying to improve my overall health, which led to more frequent visits with my doctor. That’s when I was diagnosed with a hormonal condition called PCOS. Part of this condition affects how my body processes carbohydrates and can cause insulin resistance. Learning there was a medical component behind my weight and food cravings was eye-opening. It allowed me to approach food with curiosity instead of shame.

Since then, I’ve been re-acquainting myself with food—slowly and imperfectly. I’ve learned that I need more structure, more intention, and more compassion. My relationship with food doesn’t need to be perfect to be healthier. It is allowed to evolve. It can be inconsistent and still be worthy of time and care.

I am worthy of time and care.

Moving forward, I want my relationship with food to be rooted in nourishment and balance. I do love carbohydrates—but I want to learn how they fit into my body and my life in a way that serves me. I also need to better understand the emotions tied to my cravings so I can respond to them with kindness rather than habit.

This is not about restriction.
It’s about understanding.
And it’s about learning to listen—to my body, and to myself.