Shauna Moerke is…

I have strange confession to make: I don’t hold writing implements correctly. Instead of resting the pen or pencil on my middle finger when I write, I rest it on my ring finger.

It’s an odd peculiarity I know, and one I doubt anyone would ever notice. But technically, it is incorrect. There is a reason for it though, and it’s because of chopsticks.

For those of you who don’t know, I’m multiracial (Irish, Chinese, Japanese, Hawaiian, and so on) and I spent my early childhood in Hawaii with my Mom’s family which is mostly Chinese in heritage. Thus, before I learned how to write, I was learning how to use chopsticks and that grip just carried over which is why I “incorrectly” hold writing implements to this day.

And that’s just fine with me. Because the way I hold my pen is good enough. It gets the job done and has essentially no impact on my ability to write. My poor handwriting, well, that’s just from laziness really. And at this point, learning the “correct” way would just be a pain.

Every day we find ourselves faced with “Good Enough” situations. Most of them are negligible harm or minor frustrations. The HRIS doesn’t have a specific report you want, that manager didn’t complete their report on time, and the deli gave you potato chips instead of Doritos. That’s life. We sometimes have to make concessions for things that are outside of our control.

Now, the perfectionist in me may get irritated when the world doesn’t conform to my expectations (Bend to my will already world!) but the realist in me knows to let things go. And most of the time it is even successful in convincing my perfectionist side to do that too.

Working in Human Resources there are enough situations where “Good Enough” isn’t acceptable; Times when compliance requires a careful and consistent adherence to the correct way of doing something. Let’s just make sure we aren’t letting that rigidity influence all our perceptions and interactions at work or we will start losing that “Human” part of Human Resources. You know, that fallible, imperfect “We are only human” part of who we all are and what we have to face every day.

And don’t worry if you can’t completely let go either, even trying at all would be considered good enough in my book. But I better not mention the way I type, it’s all kinds of messed up…