The best of intentions can often be used for the worst of justifications. Here I haven’t blogged for weeks and the only reason is that I haven’t found the time to download the pictures from my camera and have them available to me as I write. Well, I finally downloaded the pictures from the camera but then failed to write anything over the weekend.
The pictures cover everything from Joshua’s birthday in November, Thanksgiving in South Carolina with loads of 1st and 2nd cousins, Christmas of course, pictures of the scale with me at 219 lbs and a BMI under 30 officially marking the day I was no longer “obese”, and close up pictures at Caleb’s first Pine Wood Derby car (ok I helped a little). I will eventually post and blog about some of those pictures but for now I am contemplating my inaction based on my intentions.
I find myself often justifying not doing anything in the name of “wanting to do it right”. Be it not having the right tool, part, ingredient, “feeling up to it”, enough time, or, most commonly, enough desire for the subsequent consequence, mankind is notorious for finding reasons NOT to do things instead of reasons to “Just Do It”. Yet in life we celebrate those that just flat out find a way to make things happen. Did MacGyver EVER have the right tool? The guy could do more with a paperclip, a gum wrapper, and a watch battery than most men can do with Home Depot, Radio Shack, and Wal-Mart at their disposal. The point was not HOW it got done but rather, THAT it got done. (One caveat here is to apply this to taking action, not on household wiring. I am not advocating cheating, shortcuts, or otherwise undercutting one’s integrity, just getting off of your butt instead of resigning yourself to “failure.”)
I once had a coach that told me, “If you try, and fall flat on your face, at least you moved forward 6 feet.” There are many clichés of this subject that we have all heard, “If you are not moving forward, you are moving backward”, “When they say sink or swim there is a reason they say sink first”, or “That will go over like a pregnant pole-vaulter”. (ok, so that last one is a bit of a stretch but it was the most common phrase I think I heard growing up so it has to apply to just about anything, right?)
I can look back in my life and some of the most fulfilling "projects" I have undertaken were only undertaken after much self delay (i.e. building the shed in Silver City, tape and texturing my home there as well, or getting my Master’s Degree). I look back and say, “Why did I put off doing this in the first place?”
The point of my diatribe here was just to get you thinking about the projects you have been putting off for whatever “reason” and help you get off square one. (One could argue I was just dealing with writers block but we won’t go there.)
So, what are you going to tackle today? (<--Unabashed comment whoring here!)
2 comments:
Yep, I knew it my twin was a Pro-crastinator. No amateur stuff for him.
I've found that those silly lists that mom used to make help me get moving the best.
Put it on the list, leave the list in an obtrusive location, prioritize the list regularly, and finally, my conscience is pricked enough that I move. With enough items on my list now, I'm constantly moving. The only problem that develops is that when you're the one getting the work done, people discover that and come to you to get their work done too.
Thoughts of what your mom might say have kept me from comment "whoring", lol, but now that you've broken that barrier, I'll feel free to use it. I'm a major procrastinator and having you gone doesn't help, but I'm trying to do a little better each day.
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