Exercises in futility

Today is not working out how I had planned it. Not any part of it, not one bit.

I spent 12 hours yesterday working on my kitchen (two coats of paint on the walls, ceiling, and the "new wainscoting covered wall"), not to mention the 5 hours I spent on Friday night finishing up the wainscoting and priming everything... twice. I admit I felt a great sense of accomplishment as I washed out the brushes and headed over to my friends' place for dinner last night.

I wish I could have bottled up that feeling and taken a big swig of it today. Today, all sense of accomplishment has gone right out the window. My patience has been tested on more than one occasion, and I don't like the results.

The big item on my list today was to spend a good chunk of time on a work project. Normally I have really high and impenetrable boundaries when it comes to working outside of the normal 8-5 day, but today I had to make an exception. While the work work was the only big thing on my list, I had a couple of other things in the back of my mind that if I accomplished would be icing on the cake. But the cake, the cake was getting my work done--and doing it earlier rather than later.

Initially, my goal was to head to a coffee shop, hunker down with my decaf soy mocha and put in a good three or four hours on the work project. If I focused, I could accomplish that. But around 11, I looked at my backyard and realized in its place I was growing a miniature Amazon jungle--I swear I heard monkeys chattering. I thought, why don't I mow it quick and then I can start doing my work at Noon. In theory this sounds great and maybe even feasible, but people, I know better than this. I've never been able to mow the yard real quick, what with all of the squirrel holes and the world's most horrendous push mower--originally, this was going to be a post about the lawnmower which is most definitely the bane of my existence, but that was before the rest of the day happened. Don't worry, though, that post will be coming soon and maybe along with it a horror video entitled "Little Ms. Notetaker Mows Her Yard," I know it doesn't sound scary, but just trust me it's a ghastly sight that definitely incites nightmares... for me anyway. And today, today in my attempt to be quick, it started raining, hard, in the middle of the job. Mowing a jungle is hard enough as it is, now add a horrendous push mower and driving rain. Forty-five minutes later, jaw clenched, ego bruised, and soaking wet I quit. My yard's not very big (maybe 20ft by30ft), but I was so frustrated with the mower, the unwieldy long grass, and now the rain, that I gave up and left a small strip of grass unmowed.

I headed back into the house to shower and get ready to go to the coffee shop and work on the work. One load of laundry and a few other ADD distractions later, it was 1:30 and I was ready to leave. Only an hour and a half later than expected, but not a problem, I'd just work a little later than expected. That's when I got a call from the Man of Iron, he was in the area and needed to borrow a tool. No problem. The work could wait a little longer. And in my unnatural need to be hyper-productive in every open minute of the weekend, I thought I'd install my new light fixture while I waited for him to swing by--if I wasn't doing the work work, then at least I could cross a few other things off the list. I thought, that shouldn't be too difficult, it's a project I know how to do. But, people, I should have known better than this.

The lovely people at Rejuvenation warned me; the instructions explicitly state: "Threading the screws into the plate may be difficult as the screws have a tendency to shift. Patience and good lighting will make the job much smoother." They called out the need for patience--unfortunately for me, patience was not included in the package.

I got one of the screws threaded, but try as I might, the second screw would not thread. And I exercised as much patience as I possibly could. Just like the instructions said, the screw did shift and fell multiple times causing me to make several trips up and down the ladder (I lost count after hitting 20). I tried everything, all different angles, using different hands, repositioning the ladder, nothing worked. On one of my last trips down the ladder, it was all I had to not throw my screwdriver across the room. Ninety minutes later, jaw clenched, ego bruised, and muttering a few choice words under my breath (words about somebody's mother--not mine, not yours, but some mother somewhere, I mean it is Mother's Day and all), I quit. Clearly something was not working for me, but my stubbornness to not let the light win was keeping me there. For my sake, I had to walk away.

Flash forward to now. I'm in the coffee shop, hunkered down ready to do my work, about 4 hours later than expected--but I'm here and ready to work. Only the documents I need are in my Outlook. And my Outlook keeps locking up. Every time I open it up it won't respond. More choice words, less "responsiveness." After 30 minutes of trying to outsmart my laptop, jaw clenched, ego bruised, and at my wits end, I quit. I quit the work and started blogging instead.

I just want to have this work done, and I want to have my light installed, and I want my lawn mowed. I want my cake! But no matter what I do today, the cake and the icing are out of reach and it really irks me.

Note to self: You may think this should be some profound note about how I need to learn to be flexible and relax. But, no. I think what I want to remember from this is that some days it's just not going to work, no matter what. And even if you quit in the moment, take a deep breath get some perspective, and know that you're not allowed to quit for good. You've been given a timeout, use it.

I'm leaving the coffee shop. I'm going up the street to a brewery instead. Maybe they have that sense of accomplishment bottled up in the form of a hand crafted ale. So I'll go take a big swig of it and hope the frustrations will melt away and I'll actually get to the work.