I was, on the whole, actually pretty happy with the weekend, even if I didn’t quite hit a couple of interesting milestones.

As if I don’t have enough deadlines and due dates thanks to my career as a public sector bureaucrat, I find myself forever setting other arbitrary lines to cross in my non-work life where there’s really no need for them, and end up being upset when I don’t quite meet them.

For example; I’ve done this to myself twice in the last few days, and while I should be celebrating my accomplishments, I nonetheless find myself irked that I didn’t manage to get that one last step that would push me over the completely meaningless finish line.

As regular readers are no doubt aware, I released an album of new music on Friday. I promoted it on social media, had the bandcamp platform send out messages to those who’ve bought my other stuff, and, by the end of the weekend, I’d had what I’d definitely call my best run of online sales ever, and even with the paypal transfer fees, I’m pocketing a decent chunk of change, which is nice, as I basically put the online stuff up for “pay what you want”, which, in essence, means people can download it for free. Most people don’t, however, and I had a great sales day.

That said, I was just short of the symbolic “one hundred dollars” for the day on Friday, and a small part of me won’t let me just enjoy the fact that a bunch of people gave me money in exchange for the noises I make into microphones of their own free will, and that I made some extra money I wouldn’t have otherwise, because I can’t let myself enjoy my success.

Likewise, I’ve been putting the new bike through it’s paces this past week, and really enjoying myself, and feeling good for getting outside and exercising again and doing something I love. As of Sunday afternoon, I knocked out eighty-five miles over the couse of the week (including a successful 25 miler on the Virginia Capital Trail on Sunday), in spite of the cold weather and not being in ideal riding condition after being out of the saddle for almost four months.

Eighty-five miles after not doing it for a while is a big accomplishment, and it puts me well on pace to make up the time I missed on the VCT’s Winter Warrior Challenge (look left) and hit that challenge and earn the certificate and sweatshirt. However, as I’m a forty-six year old man who hasn’t biked in almost four months, my knees are, nonetheless, feeling those 85 miles.

Given that today is going to be slightly colder than yesterday (although it’s going to get into the 70s later this week), there’s no shame in taking today to recover and hit things fresh on Tuesday. However, a small part of me is itching to knock out those last fifteen miles this afternoon in spite of everything, because that’ll put me at 100 miles in a seven day period, even if over past seasons, it took me weeks to work up to that level.

As my lovely spouse tells it, this sort of thing is the result of “gifted kid burnout”, a strange little side-branch of impostor syndrome, and, apparently, a trendy internet meme that I’ve only run into tangentially because I’m a middling GenXer and don’t frequent the right social media places.

And she’s right. There’s something to this “never good enough” crap that drives me. It’s tough to enjoy success. If I do make a mistake, I agonize over it. It’s all over the history of this space.

It’s not a perfect thing (as several of those linked articles point out); I’ve gotten over most of that sort of focus on perfection. I do my job well enough (though stupid mistakes do irk me more than some), I get paid well enough for my efforts, and have managed to avoid the crazy rat race those business guys I went to grad school with thrive on. I’ve taken on things I wasn’t originally good at, but got “good enough” by putting in the work, despite setbacks. I’ve mostly relegated that burned-out perfectionist gifted kid to a disused dark corner.

But, he still occasionally comes out, and I deal with him.

In the meantime, I’m going to do my best to ignore him and celebrate my successes the best I can, because I did some cool stuff this week.