I’d worked all day, I’d been to the gym, I was eating on the fly before running out to another rehearsal. I finished my food and had a few minutes and started to get caught up on a few of the blogs I don’t get to read often enough. 
I should have been washing the dishes.
So the dishes remained there, a testimony to my failure. This is a failure I know well: I can’t wrap presents well, I can’t hang pictures straight, I can’t stay on top of cleaning and I leave dishes in the sink. All of these things that make up female competence elude me.
But I remembered last night, as I tried to enjoy reading despite the nagging feeling of failure, that the very same morning I had wiped down the counters and the sink. I have more energy in the morning, and from time to time I make use of it by being hospitable to myself.
Perhaps I will clean in the morning, I thought, and it turns out that I did in fact tidy up in the morning. And my cleaning was a reminder that I am still learning to show mercy to myself for doing things my way rather than the world’s.
In what ways are you learning to show yourself mercy?