Vespa Delight
Noooo, phdincreativewriting….we have two hands so we can play basketball, or so we can haul our bee boxes…not so we can stab at the air with swords.
(And another thing…6 hours of volleyball? Kill me. Can’t you watch a game or two and then leave? Go to a coffee shop until the tournament is over? Go for a nice long scooter ride on your shiny new Vespa?)
Others will always demand more of my time and my energy, and they will never, ever let up. It’s up to me to say “Uh…no. Enough. Absolutely not. No.” And rather than being “excellent” at whatever, I think I’d rather be considered “pretty good” at it—but a very positive person to work with and have around. Now, in order to be a very positive person to work with and have around, I certainly have to pull my own weight. No one wants to work with dead weight. But it also means that I don’t overdo. If I overdo, people around me feel they have to overdo, too. If I overdo, I get dull and flat affected and my colleagues become resentful. Even worse, I become resentful. And resentment makes me ugly. And we certainly don’t want Almost Gertrude to get any uglier.
This is what I do: I go easy on myself—I work, I always eat my lunch, and then I go home…on time. When I get home, I play. I do my work during the time I set aside for work, and if I don’t get it done in that amount of time, it doesn’t get done. Which means some things remain undone…or they aren’t done with excellence. But they’re done fine, and I’m happy.
Then again, it’s possible I’m about to lose my job. But I don’t think it would be any different had I achieved “excellence.”
[...] was inspired by phdincreativewriting and Almost Gertrude to upload this excerpt. We have two hands to work and to play…and balancing both will keep us [...]