Halloween has always been one of my favorite holidays, yet for some reason I rarely do anything for it. I think it's odd that I get such a thrill from seeing the decorations and the scary home scenes that my neighbors set up, with the loud scary music and the creepy ghost like things hanging in the trees, yet I do almost nothing myself. I often see some of these places at night time, and I'm so impressed that I'll go back during the day to see how it was all set up. I think to myself "Wow... that's a great idea, I could do that and improve it by doing blah blah blah".
There is a small part of the brain that we all have, and that we all use every day, but rarely think about. We'll call it "The Lobe of Standards". It's the part of our brain that tells us what is and what isn't good enough. Especially when it comes to our own creations. For instance, we'll use a carpenter as an example... If the carpenter has a low Lobe of Standards, he might make a table that wobbles a little bit, or maybe cabinets that don't quite line up right. Sometimes the doors close all the way, sometimes they don't. If a carpenter has a high Lobe of Standards, his product is flawless. The joints in the woodwork meet up perfectly, and the fit and finish in his craft is of the highest quality. Not only that, but it is sure to be very durable and last for generations. He uses the highest quality materials, and the best hardware money can buy.
So let's get back to these incredible Halloween decorations. I don't do any of it. I don't have any scary ghoulish items in the front of the house, I don't have loud music playing on big speakers, making the house seem as if it's haunted, and I don't even have a fake styrofoam gravestone in the front yard. And those are cheap! I saw them last weekend 2/$1.00!
I think that the reason for this is my desire to do everything bigger and better and more flawlessly than the next guy. And I know I don't have the time and the money to do that right now. Or, any of the last 20 years apparently. I want to set up the house and be "that guy" on the street that has the coolest decorations and the scariest music and the most amazing and original homemade props that only the mind of a true genius could come up with! But instead, the only decoration you'll see in front of my house is the Christmas wreath from 2011 which we forgot to take down so we just left it there. And no, I'm not kidding. It's less than 9 hours before the kids in my neighborhood will be knocking on the door and I don't even have candy yet. Or a pumpkin.
It's nice knowing that I have a Lobe of Standards that is high enough to be beneficial to my craft as an artist, as a writer, as a student, and it certainly came in as a great quality in my 30 years as an auto technician. It was one of the most important lessons when teaching my sons how to work on their cars. They learned those lessons too. I used to point out to them the flaws in others' work so they would learn from the mistakes of others.
But now I'm seeing a flaw in my standards... it's keeping me from being part of something else that I want to do and have fun with. It's keeping me from doing things so-so, which is really all that needs to be done. It's not like there's a big prize for the best house in the neighborhood. No one will criticize me for not making the best decorations on the street. No one is going to point and stare and say, "Look at his house... it's mediocre!"
And of course, I'm just now figuring out that I have this flaw in my Lobe of Standards. If I would have figured it out a week ago, I could have done something more about it. But it's just the way my week has gone. My television broke just minutes before Monday night football AND Game 4 of the World Series. Both my teams lost that night. (St. Louis fan through and through.) I broke my toe yesterday morning getting out of the shower. That did NOT feel good! Then last night, after Thing 2's band concert at school last night, I came home and took my boots off not realizing that said toe had been bleeding earlier in the day... so when I took my socks off... OUCH!
Keep your Lobe of Standards in a healthy place my friends. Sometimes the quality comes from the process instead of from the finished product.
