Today was supposed to be different. I planned to lift weights at the gym and then work on my novel at the coffee shop. I have not met either goal.

Instead, I procrastinated. I can’t even remember what I did this morning. Then I went grocery shopping, hoping to prepare healthy food for my girlfriend and I for most of the week.

Alas, my afternoon attempt at frying tofu cubes to a crisp for my vegetarian variation on kung pao chicken failed. The oil was not hot enough. What heat it did have dissipated quickly as soon as I dropped the half-centimeter cubes into the oil.

The last time I cooked this dish was in a commercial kitchen. I now realize frying tofu cubes at home is nowhere near as simple and perhaps even impossible without the right equipment.

I had to throw out the soggy mess.

Rationally, I know it’s just one meal, and I can always make the vegetables into something else. But I still hear the invisible parent within me shouting, wondering why I can’t make a dish I’ve made half a dozen times before, why I can’t motivate myself to don a pair of shorts and head to the gym, why I can’t drive to the coffee shop to escape the temptations of on-demand reruns, guitars, and Madden 21.

My girlfriend says I am too hard on myself. A previous psychologist would concur. I can hear him now, “Respect yourself.”

But my current psychologist and I made a pact. He and I agreed on four goals to work on over the last month, and I’ve barely met one.

I’m trying to be kind. I’m trying to remind myself I edited my novel for an hour yesterday. I opened my laptop qua 21st-century typewriter today. I’m writing now.

But impossible standards and unrealistic expectations are my curse. I could blame the Protestant work ethic of my parents. I could blame the all-or-nothing thinking that accompanies ADHD. Either way, they have become part of me, stations on my lifelong search for unobtainable perfection.

I smell the pork rubbed with brown sugar and freshly cracked Chinese five spices roasting in the oven. Perhaps we’ll have dinner after all.

Plus, there’s still time left to go to gym.