Friday, August 29, 2008

Resolve

It has come to pass that we have made a great many resolutions since we have moved here. Suddenly with modified responsibilities, we have lost, to a certain degree, motivation for many things that should be a ‘given’ in daily life.

For example..

We now have a dishwasher (awesome!), but it’s not the greatest dishwasher ever and you have to scrub the dishes before you put them in or they come out with the same gunkiness they had to begin with (we mostly rely on the sanitizing nature of the dishwasher as opposed to that whole ‘washing’ thing). So, instead of letting the dishes sit in the sink for weeks like we used to, you know, to get them good and fuzzy before we spent hours wishing we had done them sooner, we let them sit for a day or two before we spend about an hour wishing we would’ve just done it piece by piece.

And we have resolved to do that. And it lasted about one mealtime.


Another example…

We have this great habit of leaving things about the house instead of putting them away. I get home from work, change into comfy clothes and lay my work clothes on the bed, chair, whatever surface is available. That goes on for a week, until finally on Saturday I spend an hour cleaning the bedroom. And Ian loves his piles. Piles everywhere. And I don’t know what to do with stuff so I just chuck it somewhere to ‘deal with it later’.

We resolved to put our [fill in the blank] away (at least twice) and that actually may have never happened.


Yup, we’re still going…

Remember this? When I resolved to paint every morning? Yeah, well, I’ve been painting, but it has gotten more and more sporadic as the weeks have passed. My only hope is that with being consistently full time at work, I will be a consistent painter, as I was the first week I started this resolution, when I was working full time.


Not to mention when we were going to start working out consistently (at least a dozen times this year).


And that is only the tip of the iceberg. I have been able to maintain a few things that I have consciously decided to do pretty consistently, but that’s about it. The frustrating thing is, I genuinely want to do these things.. really badly. I want to be disciplined. I want to ‘have it all together’ at least at the most basic level. I want to be able to overcome my desire not to do something by realizing the value of doing it. You know?

I also want to tell myself things like ‘oh, you’ll figure it out eventually’ ‘when you have kids it’ll get straightened out’ ‘you’re going through so many transitions all the time, how can you possibly hope for any consistency’, but I know that those are just excuses and ways to put off the truth of the matter. I’ve just got to do it. It’s not going to be any easier tomorrow (and who am I kidding thinking KIDS will make it easier??), in fact it will probably just get harder and more frustrating the longer I find ways to drag it out.

So. I’m going to try to come up with some kind of system for myself to dredge up that motivation on the good days, so it’s not as hard to find on the bad days. I would also love suggestions… :)

4 comments:

  1. you and me both sister (Mandy sent me over). You have described the state of things in my house and in my brain rather perfectly. No ideas. Wish I did ...

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  2. that's ok! i'm just glad to know i'm not alone :)

    thanks for stopping by!

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  3. uuuggghhh... i don't know.

    i think it's the curse of the right-brained personality. we are at the whim of inspiration. drew is unbelievably disciplined, and me? well, i don't even do the things i wanna do... blah blah blah.

    when you figure it out lemme know!

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  4. i think you might be on to something Mandy.. because when i pretend like i'm left brained and make lists and all kinds of organized things.. i think i do better.

    that's what i'm going to attempt this week.. i'll let you know how it goes :)

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