Work that wants to be done
Sunday at home
There’s nothing more satisfying than getting something done that’s been bugging you. And there’s a small pet peeve I have. I don’t like gray wood. For example below:
Around Omaha you’ll see lots of fences that are made of this poor untreated wood. It’s wood that says to me: I’ve spent too much time in the sun and nobody cares.
This is wood then that feels like it “wants” to be cared for. If you approach it with a bucket full of paint or stain and a brush, it will absorb the liquid quickly and seems to me the wood takes on a new life.
Compare that to lets say sweeping the floor. Yes most of the dog hair gets out of the way and you start to believe that crumbs don’t belong under the table, but there’s always some bit of something that runs screaming away from the broom so that you’re never able to quite get the kitchen floor clean with just a broom.
You then go for back up. The Mop! But the mop is just as helpless as broom without a bucket of soapy water and every couple of steps you’re wringing the mop like it owes you money so that the water does it’s job of helping to clean rather than moving dust around.
And for a brief glorious moment the floor is clean. But if you have other members in your household, a clean floor is a temptation too strong to be resisted. Especially for the dogs. A dog not knowing why they couldn’t be trusted the floor will now feel the urge to run across this “new” floor as if they’ve never had a chance to run before. Paws must love the feeling of fresh linoleum.
In any case some tasks are more fulfilling to do than others. But even when some tasks are difficult and icky there’s a feeling once you’ve completed them that you’ve done something that makes the world “more right.”
And I think most days there’s a lot of ignoring and avoiding work that should be done. Sometimes it’s even work we like to do like to do like writing a thoughtful card or post for people.
Last week the news was pretty dreadful. And often when there’s dreadful news there’s not much I can do to help. So part of my strategy to combat the feeling of helplessness is to find a task that I can do, and do that. It might be staining a deck, mowing a lawn or even just *sometimes* folding the clothes but I find that you can find tasks that “want” to be done and when you complete them, you heal yourself a bit.
This week I hope you find a task that needs your time and energy and that you can make progress on it.
-Mike