Day One
Today's rant is going to involve finishing what you start. I am guilty of this and it frustrates me when I get part way through a project and have to put it down and start something else. Call it a pet peeve, call it what you like, but what it boils down to is an internal nagging saying, "When are you going to finish that, when???"
This is true externally as well. Let's say you have kids (four) that decide they are going to make a peanut butter and jelly. They take out the jelly, get a knife, open the bread bag and take out slices, and get excessive amounts of peanut butter and jelly on the knife. Fast forward to two hours later you enter the kitchen to get some more water and there on the counter is the bread, open and turning hard, twist tie MIA. The peanut butter covered knife is just laying on the counter creating a sandwich with the granite. The jelly jar is open and abandoned (where the heck is the lid anyway). And there is the dirty plate sitting precariously on the edge of the counter waiting for its moment to jump and create another mess that will make your head explode.
I know that sounds like it would be a rare occurrence but I am talking daily. I am trying to push the understanding that doing a task, start to finish, not only makes you feel like you have accomplished something worthwhile, but also can be therapeutic. Allowing yourself to become immersed in a task and focus your breath to match some portion of your movements can relieve stress and help to bring what is really important into view.
Usually what happens is I yell, no one listens, everyone thinks I am a madman, and I clean up, put everything away and fill the dishwasher. And even then I am taunted by the fact that there is no way I will fit everything in the dishwasher and I can either walk away and feel like junk later when I walk in and realize I never had time to finish the task of emptying and refilling until the infinite pile of dishes that grows just as fast as I reduce its mass. Or I can continue by hand washing everything that is leftover and spend three more hours of my life wondering how we have so many dishes and why we don't just start sharing one spoon and eating the food out of the serving dishes in shifts.
Luckily I named this the Daily Rant so at least you had an idea of what you were in for before you started reading. Because really this isn't about dishes or peanut butter. What really pushes us to rush from task to task is TIME or a lack thereof. We are all constantly hurried or in a hurried state because we are trying to get back every minute that we lose while doing activities we don't enjoy. When we are at work and not being challenged we feel we have lost time and then we rush to get that time back by completing tasks at a rate faster than is recommended or helpful.
What I would really like is if we as the people of the planet could get together and say, we don't want to live in the 50's but what we want is to go back to a time when customer service mattered. When taking a project slow and making sure it was done correctly the first time meant more than getting the job done quickly.
This is true externally as well. Let's say you have kids (four) that decide they are going to make a peanut butter and jelly. They take out the jelly, get a knife, open the bread bag and take out slices, and get excessive amounts of peanut butter and jelly on the knife. Fast forward to two hours later you enter the kitchen to get some more water and there on the counter is the bread, open and turning hard, twist tie MIA. The peanut butter covered knife is just laying on the counter creating a sandwich with the granite. The jelly jar is open and abandoned (where the heck is the lid anyway). And there is the dirty plate sitting precariously on the edge of the counter waiting for its moment to jump and create another mess that will make your head explode.
I know that sounds like it would be a rare occurrence but I am talking daily. I am trying to push the understanding that doing a task, start to finish, not only makes you feel like you have accomplished something worthwhile, but also can be therapeutic. Allowing yourself to become immersed in a task and focus your breath to match some portion of your movements can relieve stress and help to bring what is really important into view.
Usually what happens is I yell, no one listens, everyone thinks I am a madman, and I clean up, put everything away and fill the dishwasher. And even then I am taunted by the fact that there is no way I will fit everything in the dishwasher and I can either walk away and feel like junk later when I walk in and realize I never had time to finish the task of emptying and refilling until the infinite pile of dishes that grows just as fast as I reduce its mass. Or I can continue by hand washing everything that is leftover and spend three more hours of my life wondering how we have so many dishes and why we don't just start sharing one spoon and eating the food out of the serving dishes in shifts.
Luckily I named this the Daily Rant so at least you had an idea of what you were in for before you started reading. Because really this isn't about dishes or peanut butter. What really pushes us to rush from task to task is TIME or a lack thereof. We are all constantly hurried or in a hurried state because we are trying to get back every minute that we lose while doing activities we don't enjoy. When we are at work and not being challenged we feel we have lost time and then we rush to get that time back by completing tasks at a rate faster than is recommended or helpful.
What I would really like is if we as the people of the planet could get together and say, we don't want to live in the 50's but what we want is to go back to a time when customer service mattered. When taking a project slow and making sure it was done correctly the first time meant more than getting the job done quickly.
