Captain’s Log — All the Icky Things

Sitting in church on Sunday, my mind wandered down a rabbit hole of contemplation about things we could and should do but absolutely don’t want to. 

It feels like a ridiculous amount of life comes down to that place between the drudgery of the icky things and avoiding them or growing up and just getting them done. 

True confessions — I’m an idea gal. I’ll generate ideas, see possibilities, start new things all day long, but when it comes to details and the tedious monotony of real life, the uncomfortable, emotionally loaded jobs, I just make up some new fun things to do and move on. 

Denial has been a lovely place for many years. 

It’s a personality flaw for sure, but mostly I haven’t cared. I like doing fun things, being happy, and enjoying myself. 

Maybe it’s this getting old thing, but the idea of just doing the icky stuff has started to actually enter my consciousness. It’s not really forcing myself to do the things I don’t like so much as becoming aware that I do this. And then realizing I can just do the icky thing and get over it. Get it over with. 

The results have been gratifying. Icky things lose their sting — their power. 

Maybe our grammas were right; we really should forgive people, speak up, clean the garage, make the dump run. Clear the gunked-up spaces for the good stuff. 

I feel like I’m not the only one who does this kind of stuff. Communities and institutions have “icky things” too. Deferred maintenance, bad employees nobody confronts, budgets nobody wants to look at. Relationships that need repairing. Decisions postponed until someone else makes them for us. 

Maybe adulting isn’t becoming the kind of person who suddenly loves doing hard things, but figuring out you don’t have to like it; you just have to get it done. 

So while we enjoy all this newspapering — all the parades and covering the meetings and meeting all the cool people, we’ll still be right here, filing and taking out the trash, and as always…

…Keeping you Posted.

Rach