Sometimes a C+ works

I recently read a book entitled Five-Star Families: Moving yours from good to great by Carol Kuykendall. This book provides suggestions for Moms trying to balance the dreams they had before their kids were born with the realities of motherhood. The best piece of advice in the book (from my perspective) was the idea that sometime “C+ Works.”

I tend to believe that everything I do needs to rate an A+ and, more often than not,I end up beating myself up because I just cannot meet such a standard. I want my fitness level to be at its A+ pre-kids level (it is not working), I want my house to always be clean (definitely not working), I want dinners to be ready, the kids’ rooms to be organized, the dogs to be washed, the garage to be clutter-free and the yard to mowed and trimmed. Needless to say, most of this is not working either.

Then, there is work - I want to be on top of things at the office as well. Yet, anyone familiar with academia knows that the more you do the more you have to do. My advisor used to say that in academia “No good deed goes unpunished.” So the A+ standard is impossible in that realm of my life as well.

As I reflected on the concept of accepting a C+ in some areas of my life I realized that my A+ standards were also stifling my use of technology. For example, I recently sent out our 2006 Christmas. They arrived in friends’ mailboxes over the July 4 weekend. There are a lot of reasons they were so late including my husband’s entire family visiting for the holidays, my husband turning 40 on January 1 and enduring a particularly heavy course load in the Spring semester. Yet, if I am honest with myself I didn’t send out Christmas cards because I wanted to have A+ cards. I was going to make a postcard with a collage of pictures from throughout the year and embed particularly funny sayings from the kids. Why? Everyone except my mother-in-law and my grandmother will either immediately throw away the card or display it on the refrigerator for a short time and then throw it away. An A+ standard doesn’t make sense.

Finally, I used a great service provided by the USPS via Netpost. I uploaded a picture, typed some text, imported my address database and had my cards mailed for me within 15 minutes. I didn’t even have to leave the computer screen. In two days the cards started arriving all over the country. The cards don’t look professional but in this case C+ definitely works. I used technology to my advantage rather than my detriment.

Sometimes technology affords us so much potential that we get caught up in what it can do and feel stifled if our creations don’t measure up to the possibilities. I took the following video of my son and two of his friends last Thursday. I had plans to add music, fancy transitions and to edit out some of the poorly shot video. Something tells me my friends, Laura and Cathy, will be more happy to see their boys on film today than they would be if I held onto the video for the next 10 years until I had time to make it of A+ quality.

Sometimes a C+ does work!!



P.S. For those of you trying to figure out which service to use to host your video I also uploaded the video on Our Media. The video on Our Media was compressed for Web Streaming (2.7 MB). The video on YouTube was compressed for CD quality (8.8 MB) As with any digital content you have to weigh quality versus file size. I personally don't see much of a difference but maybe that is my new C+ attitude talking. I plan to try out other sites such as OneTrueMedia soon.