Tuesday, January 10, 2012

further thoughts

You know, I've been catching up on all the other blogs I read and posting various comments and giving advice, and then I come back here to AB3 and I have double my usual number of readers for that last post, the one in which I recommended being more type A.

And I feel like such a fake.  You should not be taking advice from me.  I don't know what the hell I'm talking about.  The "feel bad post" was written as much to myself as it was to anyone else; I am the laziest person I know.  It's like a pendulum swing, like someone who has been as lazy as they possibly can be coming back toward the center of average activity and spouting wisdom about the wonders of working hard.  Do not take me seriously.  Seriously. 

Julie made an interesting point in her blog the other day (completely unrelated to my post) about how sometimes you know things are right by how easy they are, how smoothly they work. (And I'm re-wording what she said here, so this may not be what she meant, if it makes no sense, blame me, not her.)  Like you've been pushing and pushing and pushing on a brick wall, and all the sudden you notice there's a door you could walk through.  You pour your heart into method A and get no results, but you keep working your heart out because it seems like the right thing to do, but you're not getting where you want to go.  So then you try method B and suddenly you're getting results.  Obviously method B works better.

I've had that experience, so I know what she means.  It's an excellent point.  I think you have to find what works at any given time.  Sometimes you need to really work your butt off and get things done.   Sometimes you need to stop working so hard and find a different way that gets better results for less effort.  Sometimes you need to pamper yourself, give yourself a break, be kind to yourself. Sometimes life shouldn't be as hard as you're making it; sometimes you're not expecting enough from yourself.

All of those things are true.  Balance.  It keeps coming back to balance.  Now if we could just figure out how to find it.

4 comments:

  1. I do that pendulum swing, too. Frantically busy, dead still, moving but as little as possible. I see it in myself in all things. Except the laundry. I just can't keep the laundry done more than I have clean clothes to wear tomorrow laying on the bed. And sometimes I pull the least dirty pants out of the laundry pile.
    See you're not as lazy as you thought you were.

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  2. hmmm, well it occurred to me while reading your comment that what we're doing is exactly that-- moving through activity and rest, which is a form of taking care of ourselves. Who knew we were already good at this? :-)

    Laundry, oddly enough, is the one household chore I don't mind. You put in the clothes all dirty and wrinkled, and they come out clean and fresh-- it's like magic. The bathroom may be a little grungy, but we always have clean clothes. ha.

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  3. Maybe it's just that those of us who don't have a problem Giving Ourselves Permission to Loaf, see the value in sometimes pulling up our socks and getting sh*t done. ...And those who are all work work work place more importance on letting themselves off the hook sometimes. :-)

    OK laundry gets done here because husband's uniforms need cleaning. But vacuuming? Hellz no. lol

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    1. Pendulum swing rather than balance. I see what you mean, because that balance thing makes you feel like you should have some sort of sense of what the right balance is. Like there's some zen state you could find where everything would be in balance. But if you're moving back and forth between activity and rest as needed, there is no perfect balance, it's just what you need at any given time.

      It also occurred to me that you could just see it as choosing the right tool for the what you're doing. Sometimes the tool you need is activity; sometimes it's rest. But the main reason that occurred to me is that there was a really funny punchline on Big Bang Theory the other night that was about choosing a tool. :-)

      I also hate hate hate vacuuming. But I love that vacuum has two Us in it. That and "continuum" and what's the third one? the only three words in the English language with double Us. As opposed to Ws.

      Just googled. Residuum. but it turns out that there are also several more obscure ones that I've never heard of in my life (menstruum? triduum?)

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