Relearning

Today's prompt was about relearning, or at least that's what I wrote about ;)

Back in the day, a department at work gave up one of the treats in their hallway snack bowls and replaced it with a bowl of folded up paper slips containing sayings — do-gooder, feel good aphorisms. At the time, I snarked that these were “virtue snacks”. Like Dove, but without the chocolate. At the time, I was anti virtue and pro calorie even though I knew that the virtue snacks could be good (again, that word!) for my well-being.

During the pandemic, my sister sent me a package for my birthday that contained a similar set of aphorisms, and whaddaya know? One really resonated with me. “Do something today that your future self will thank you for.” I think of it now when I’m stuck between action and inaction. Today I will probably use it to unstick myself about finding someone to help with occasional housekeeping while my husband is ill and we spend a lot of time on the road.

This idea of anti-procrastination keeps drawing me in, and I do believe it is a lesson I will continue to learn and unlearn. A few weeks ago I read an interview with the artist Alexandra Grant, speaking of her godmother, Alice: “I’m still really lazy and so I still play this game with Alice, where I’ll look at the dishes in the sink and go, ‘I don’t want to do those dishes.’ But then I’ll think, ‘If they were Alice’s dishes, would you do them?’ And then I’m like, ‘Yeah, I’d do her dishes.” 

I’ve done “Alice’s dishes” this week as if they are my own (and, ahem, they are). 

So yes, I have that pale lavender paper with the words about doing something today on my whiteboard at home. But just so you don’t think I've gone soft, there are a few pre-pandemic thoughts there as well.

PS So this is how good my sister is -- I looked at the back of the lavender paper and these must have come with a donation to the American Heart Association. And I don't know who sent me the deeply weird cat comic (maybe my oldest friend in the world that nice boy?), but I have continued to find it funny decades later.

PPS The writing group asked me to read my piece, above, which is a first.