Failure to meet others’ expectations will send me back again and again to seek approval that will never come. ~ For Today (Kindle Locations 2023-2024).

You think I should have told you sooner,
but it won’t change what you do.
You would not have prepared for my trip,
gotten your plans together, set menus, shopped,
become independent. I’ll leave the food,
do what I can before I go, get everything ready
for my 50-some hours gone. I can’t please you.
Five books to work on, all worthy, all need me.
I’ll do them as I can, have told you the order I’l take,
you know when you signed on…but I know
you want me to get to yours. And I will. When I said.
Other things fall by the wayside, don’t meet my expectations
much less yours. I really will get to them. And don’t mind
if you remind me, but though I want you to be pleased,
to think I’m the bomb, I can’t be everything for all people.
I’m a people-pleaser by nature and feel like nothing
when you don’t think I’m something. But I’ll never please you all
and, when it comes down to it, what you think of me
is none of my business. And if you and I believe that
for some crazy reason I’ll get twenty times as many things done
as I would have…trying to please you.