Thanks for all the great comments this week. I really appreciate them.
Here’s the thing: I’m too old to apologize for how I am, you know? I was sitting on my back porch with my sister last night and somehow started talking about the family chores list we had when we were growing up and I said, “That. That right there. That’s why I’m like this (points toward the house).”
The beauty about being a grown up is that you get to take charge of your life in ways that typically don’t dawn on you until you’re really in the meat of it all. I look back on my twenties (shudder) and it’s appalling to me how much of those years I took for granted, simply because I made the decision to make no choice at all. Little by little, though, I eventually climbed out of the numb, wayward existence I was leading and became more of the person I am today: someone who is organized; someone who likes to work out; someone who pays her bills on time; someone who saves; someone who is generally responsible; someone who values herself enough to be vulnerable to change.
I was getting something out of our beer fridge (the old, old refrigerator left by the former owners that now occupies a random space in our basement) and I noticed Scott had put in there a four-pack of some fancy-pants beer without taking the beers out of the cardboard container. In that moment, I felt a tingly sensation, almost more of a thump to my gut, really. Later in the evening, I had the same sensation when I returned to our bedroom only to gaze upon the piles of clothes I’d created more than a week ago – winter/store/toss – and wondered when I was going to get around to actually doing anything that resembled getting that project started.
These are the things I need to work on. These are things that don’t really matter. These are the things that I need to let go of and ignore.
I left the beers within that container. The clothes are still in piles on our bedroom floor.
The world spins madly on.
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It’s unlikely that I’ll change my workout schedule. I love it too much, and I like how much better I feel as a result. I can, however, be better about recognizing that there are other things in my life I love equally and need space in my calendar, too, so sometimes that Saturday morning run can take a back seat to a late Friday evening on the porch with my husband with one more glass of wine. If someone came to my house and saw a clump of dog hair or ten-million, they will likely not notice or not care that I haven’t swept nor have I made that appointment to get Glinny groomed, but I’m going to get around to it today because I know I’ll have some bandwidth to make the call.
Like I said, it does not matter that the beers are not outside of their original packaging, but make no mistake: I’m still cleaning out my frig every week.
Here’s the thing: I know I can’t be alone in having peccadilloes. These just happen to my peccadilloes. When we have all of these conversations on Facebook and Twitter about women and working and not working and babies and not having babies, it’s really just a horse of a different color. Life is sticky and weird and everything is a moving target and we all do our best to accommodate and cope so by the end of the day we can try to sleep soundly enough to get up and try all over again.
I just want to be less of an asshole as I’m trying, and a little more self-aware of when I’m veering too far left of field. Letting go of some of my need for order in the minutia is a good start, and hopefully have less of a chance of defining who I am than the laughter and living taking place under this clean, organized roof.
