Did It Skip Me

On the phone with the Silver Fox last night I realized something that I so often realize when talking to him, he tries to operate in excellence. He doesn't call it that, but plain and simple: he does the best job he can possibly do with whatever task he is given. When I thought about it, my entire immediate family is that way. When I think of my mom planning family vacations, parties, events, cooking, raising us, etc. she does the very best she can with the resources available. My brother and sister also face the things they are charged with with an "I'm-Doing-My-Best" attitude. Even if the end result isn't always what they wanted, I believe they've done their best. I hadn't noticed this until my adult years. But now that I have, I'm a bit bothered that I hadn't always had that attitude. Did it skip me? I mean, I am the middle child. Could it be true that the middle child always ends up with some sort of shortcoming or personal hang-up not seen in the others? My mom, sister, and brother take to water like fish and I'm still trying to improve my stroke to graduate to the deeper ends of the pool (In years of pool diving I've never seen the Silver Fox get his feet wet. Never!). Could excellence have skipped me as apparently the natural ability to swim did?

This weekend I went back and read through the posts that I'd made last week. I was shocked and embarrassed to see so many mistakes I'd made grammatically, especially when I know that I know better. Not only do I know better, but I'm trying to live a life of excellence. I'm an excellent proofreader most of the time and yet I failed to catch very simple mistakes in those posts. I contemplated if I was being too hard on myself, but I concluded that I wasn't. There is no such thing as being reasonably too hard on myself if I'm trying to be an operator of excellence. Even if no one caught the mistakes, I know they are there. I wanted to go back and correct them, but I've decided to leave them as a reminder that I have to be more attentive, more meticulous. Besides, I'm a person with outsized goals for my life. That will require buy-in from others in order to manifest. How can I ask people to trust me when my product is less than best?  It's something I'll continually work to improve.