Petulant protest

I commented yesterday about my panache for avoiding things. Usually it is one particular task that needs to get done, it rarely has a hard deadline and the consequences of failing to complete the task is essentially to be given more time to complete it. This allows for this perpetual psychological nagging to Just Do It.

The task at hand is completing a personal financial statement for my bankers. I am not looking to borrow any new money and I have my business line of credit nearly paid off, but it is one of those banking regulations – I guess. These avoided tasks morph into behemoth tasks based on imagination and the sheer will of the mind to convert them into impossible tasks, thus a perfect defense for avoiding them. Why attempt a task if it is so obviously perceived as insurmountable?

And so I distract myself. Rather, I attempt to distract myself which ultimately ends in my walking in circles and being paralyzed and incompetent. I can’t manage to do laundry or working on my current quilt project or pluck my eyebrows or go grocery shopping. I am dead in the water, obstructed and blocked. It goes beyond writers’ block. It is a blockage to merely living.

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I had to SHOVE myself outside to weed the rose garden. It was 84 degrees at 8 AM.

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I managed to finish the task and I hitched onto that momentum and tackled the bankers’ chore. And it was easy.

Why do we make such a humongous issue out of things? The myth busting is that the whole endeavor took 43 minutes. A fair amount of that was figuring out how to allow editing of the Excel document from 2011. Another chunk of time was used signing onto a dozen secure, password protected websites getting retirement plan balances and mortgage balances and medical school loan pay off amounts.

I am a diligent, driven person. I am exceptionally responsible, too. I think my avoidance of the “grown up” tasks is some juvenile remnant of protest to being an adult. There is a petulant protest as I lie on the couch and binge watch House with my oldest son. But if I am to measure the more important thing, I would say that spending five hours with my son when he leaves for college in three weeks supersedes all other things.

 

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