I got a portable CD player for Christmas from Mike. It plays CDs and MP3s. I have really enjoyed using it at the gym. If I’m wearing my headphones, I don’t have to communicate with any of the people there if I don’t want to. Wearing headphones is like a cloaking device for everyone else. If some weirdo talks to me and I don’t want to deal with him, I can just pretend not to hear.

Of course, I can also just slip into another world when I’m exercising with music. A single CD isn’t quite enough when I’m exercising, which is why I’m glad that this player works with MP3s also. I just made myself a MP3 CD that holds all of my new albums. Beyonce, both Outkast albums, Pink’s new cut, John Mayer and Now 14. I have hours of music on one CD, so I don’t have to change during a workout, or even during the week. It’s not as good as my computer at home that has every album I ever owned on it, but it’s good enough for the gym.

Good enough is such a new idea for me. Good enough always has been promoted to me as the worst of mediocrity. Mr. Leonhardt at K-Mart used to say, “Good enough is not good enough.” Since my K-Mart days, I’ve always scorned good enough. Only perfect would do for me and only perfect would do for whomever I was working for. Only perfection was good enough.

This, my friends, is the first step toward insanity. I drove myself crazy trying to be perfect. No matter how good I was, I never thought it was good enough. Perfection is a demon that I have been fighting since I recognized it as such a couple of years ago. Perfection is an addiction that is never satiated, no matter how much I eat at its table. When I purge it from one aspect of my life, it surfaces in another.

So, this CD/MP3 player isn’t perfect, but it’s good enough for the gym. I may not be perfect, but I’m good enough for now. I’ll always work on myself to get better, but until then, I can be happy with my strengths and abilities as they are. It’s hard being human.