I’m thinking of working on self-improvement this week. Things just seem to be taking longer to accomplish lately. I don’t know if I’ve gotten lazy doing the same things over and over for the last twenty-odd years or it’s a matter of boredom. Sometimes you have to set a fire underneath your backside to get the urge to move forward.
November was Write a Novel in a Month, month. I never did get started on that because I was still finishing the last novel I started waaay baaack when. But I did finally finish it and I think it’s my best work so far. Not time wise, by any means, but I’m working on that.
You’ve probably heard people use the phrase, “personal best.” I always wondered why they cared. Your personal best? Yippee! No competition there. I can do that. Nobody running against me, nobody raising their child to be a cardiologist while I’m still working on getting my son potty-trained. Nobody bragging about canning 400 jars of apple sauce in their free time while juggling a law career and raising twelve foster children—while I struggle to get out of bed in time to catch Regis and Kelly after preparing a thermos of cold cereal for my child to eat on the bus.
Once upon a time, it mattered what others did because it made me work harder to achieve my goals—or the goals of my friends anyway. I didn’t want them to think I couldn’t run three miles if they could, or lose three dress sizes in a month if they did. I certainly didn’t want them to think my children were as dumb as rocks if theirs could speak Chinese and put their own clothes on.
Maybe I quit worrying so much about what everyone else did and lost that competitive edge. Now when someone says, “I lost ten pounds,” I say, “That’s great!” and go eat a donut. If they say, “My son is majoring in Computer Science, I say, “So’s mine.” Computer Science-Fiction.
So I guess what I’m saying is—I’ve lost that need to succeed, that drive to compete, the pride I felt in a freshly scrubbed toilet, and a reason to get out of bed each day. But I think I’ve found a way to get it all back.
I’m reworking the whole “personal best” thing. Now when I scrub the toilet I’m going to set the timer and crank it up a notch. If I clean the bathroom in five minutes one week, the next week I’m gonna have that long-handled brush moving so fast it’ll be a blur. Personal best takes on a whole new meaning when there’s a stopwatch around.
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stopwatch, my foot…you don’t even own a stopwatch, but i’m sure you’ll tell me you “got one somewhere in the attic.” And you are the sponge lady not the long-handled brush woman.
C’mon. You’re too young to be put out to pasture (or in your case, put yourself out to pasture!) Don’t ‘settle’ for this mundane, ‘just get by’ attitude that only competes with your own ‘personal best’. (I think in past generations they called this lack of ambition, laziness…)
Dream, aspire, reach, stretch…..oops, I’m sounding like your exercise videos….anyway, go ahead aim HIGH!…….clean both toilets this week!