Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Day Two Hundred Thirty Eight

Danger!  Peligro!  Warning!  I'm not the same of blogger that I used to be.  Or something like that.  In being true to myself I must admit that I'm sort of morphing the rules by which I blog.  A few months ago life threw a few curve balls that made it damn near impossible to show up here every day with something to say and a pile of stuff to get rid of.  So I did my best to scramble and make up for it, "paying back" the blog with items I missed, etc.; I even felt some guilt for good measure.  Then more recently life threw some fast balls and things really got away from me for a while.  This time I didn't feel the guilt, I just said, "Psh, the blog is the last thing I can focus on right now."  And so it goes.  It reminds me of something a friend recently said, "The funny thing about evil thoughts is you let yourself have one and the next thing you know, you've had six or seven."  So too it is with letting a good habit slide.  It is so easy to fall off the wagon and getting back on can sometimes involve clawing and being dragged in the dirt for a bit.  Realizing this makes me question the concept of sticking to things as a show of character.  I really don't like to be dragged behind the wagon.

I remember when my oldest son was about seven he was going to karate classes.  At first he really liked it.  His white belt got traded for a yellow one.  The colors kept changing and he memorized the forms and then one day he announced he didn't like karate anymore and didn't want to go back.  I could relate.  My entire life I've had a pattern of becoming interested in something and then after I understood it or got really good at it I would become bored and want to move on to something else that interested me.  Evidently my son had the same idea about karate.  So I lobbied in his favor against his father who thought that the right thing to do was to make him go to karate, to not let him quit something, to help him realize you have to stick things out even when they cease to be fun.  Buck up and all that.  In the end I won and he quit going to karate.  I felt like I had done the right thing and at the time my son was grateful.  Now fast forward fifteen years.  My son and I are talking and he says, "You know something I'm really disappointed about?  I wish you wouldn't have let me quit karate."  So who knows?  If it had turned out differently would he have said, "I wish you wouldn't have made me keep going to karate after I said I didn't like it anymore"?  Sometimes we're damned if we do and damned if we don't.


The point is, if I may attempt to make one here, that for me this journey through the crazy maze we call life is all about figuring out what works for us and doing more of that.  Maybe it isn't about all or nothing.  Maybe you can do some and be ok.  Instead of blogging every single day for a year I've decided that I'll blog until I have a year's worth of entries, a full 365.  If I need to take a day off because I'm out of town or overwhelmed then I take a day off.  Fair enough?  It works for me.  No guilt.  I'm driving twelve hours Friday to go see my daughter perform in a play at her university.  Then I'm driving home and will be back at work by mid day Monday.  I will not be blogging Friday-Sunday.  I will not feel guilty.  Maybe we should have offered to our son that he take two weeks off from karate and then checked in to see how he felt about it.

Today's five items are all from a basket of clothing that I found stashed in the laundry room that I've been ignoring for a very long time:

1.  T, this one's for you:  A diaphanous black blouse with ridiculous ruffles on it
2.  A pile of nine socks whose mates are long gone - I can't make myself wear mismatched socks, I've tried
3.  A green and white button down shirt that I used to really like and now look at and intensely dislike.  Go figure.
4.  A pair of blue rayon drawstring pants
5.  The little clay model of a gypsy wagon that I made...didn't run out well and it is just collecting dust


4 comments:

  1. Brilliant! Over the years I've thought a lot about commitment and following through, character building, etc. Puzzled by people who quit a 10-day retreat on day 5, the est training in the middle of the second day. Sometimes it's the right thing to do and sometimes? I guess, for me, I would always be curious about what I missed. And it took me five tries to quit smoking.

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  2. I used to finish books I hated out of respect to the author. That sounds so naive, now.

    I remember feeling free and self-righteous the first time I walked out of a movie; guilt and relief the day I walked away (literally, down the sidewalk) from a dreary and difficult job; fear and ecstasy after walking away from an stifling spouse.

    It took me years to realize that I am not the noble finisher; not the toiling, steady ant. My house is chaotic. I'm not a good German.

    Easily proficient and easily bored--such is the curse. I'm glad you found peace. And if this is the last entry you ever write, that's cool, too.

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  3. I feel silly for not keeping up better, not realizing that so much time had passed since your last post. I hope you are doing well in your endeavor, wherever you are. Please don't give up entirely, I'll be the first to admit that "sporadic" is an optimistic description of my own blogging frequency; it takes some special inspiration for me to post something! Don't give up, there are some of us still cheering for you.

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