The Dis-Orient
I can’t do it, just can’t. I tried very hard to do it. Like, really really hard because I was totally serious about the plan. But it’s just not in me, I can no longer deny who and what I am.
Cairn Ann Rodrigues is goal oriented. She cannot exist feasibly without lists, targets or yardsticks.
If you will remember, I posted a blog titled The Orient a short while back. At the time, I was breaking under the burden of too many chores and my own self-imposed mandates. After a lifetime of cracking a whip across my own back, this slave staged a revolt.
I threw off the shackles of my oppression and told that purpose driven task harpy to shove it. For a short while, things were okay. It was nice not to have that constant dialogue in my head, that I should be doing more, that I needed to get organized. For a short while, it was easy not too listen.
The problem with not having goals is that nothing gets done. The other problem is that simple maintenance tasks also do not get done. The mail piles up, the kitchen table gets buried beneath assorted flotsam, the cupboards slowly empty. For a brief interlude, it was easy to just ignore all of it.
Isn’t it funny how fast the infrastructure of your life deteriorates if you aren’t constantly maintaining it?
Yeah, I can’t live like that. I’m hard wired for order. I want things to be tidy, I want the machine to run smoothly. Capitulating to the natural order of things, I went back to making morning lists.
It was such a relief too, it actually made me happy!
There were many valuable lessons learned in the slack time though, there are no regrets. I’m much kinder with myself now. I don’t set too many tasks before myself on any one day, nor do I heap on the recriminations if they don’t all get done.
It’s much less fractious inside my head now. The house is still untidy, but it’s slowly coming back together. There is also some food in the larder, just in case I get a notion to actually cook. It was a much needed break, a vacation from myself, but this nose requires some sort of grindstone.
It was one of those drastic actions I’m so fond of. And it was necessary for a while, but there’s no shame in going back. This time I understand how to be nice to me, how not to get tangled up in all the dangling threads. Drastic actions are disconcerting, but often they are the only way to effect true change.
Have you ever done something drastic that changed your life?
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