To ensure that I don’t waste the unexpected gift of time at home, I am compiling a list of all of those niggly little jobs that have been bugging me for ages. Sometimes for years.
The thought of heading back to work in a few weeks time with all of these overdue tasks completed gives me a feeling of anticipatory pleasure.
I have started to tackle jobs on my list and one of these was to finish painting the skirting boards in a room that was renovated over two years ago. Two years!
I had everything I needed, the paint, the brushes, the tape, just no motivation.
I have just completed this task and it looks great. No paint was spilt or brushed anywhere that it shouldn’t have been.
The whole job probably took me a maximum of half an hour. That’s correct, I had procrastinated over completing a task that took me 30 minutes from start to finish, for two years!
So I have been contemplating today about the weight of procrastination. Things that have irritated me for so long and the effort I have put into coming up with excuses about how now wasn’t the right time to tackle what needed to be done, have been weighty stones that I have been carrying around.
There are other examples. The buttons that I didn’t sew on my European pillow cases for about a year. A five minute job to remedy.
The hem that needed stitching, the drawer full of junk that needed clearing, sorting and compiling all of my childrens’ school art, reports and other mementoes into tidy memory boxes.
All of these things have taken only minutes to fix.
Working through my list of outstanding jobs feels so good. It is liberating and energising being freed from these self-imposed obligations.
I am excited at the prospect of ticking even more tasks off my list. Because I never intended to be at home over this period of lockdown, there has never been a better opportunity for me to make my home a peaceful and restful sanctuary. I can tackle overdue tasks by meeting them without resistance and as a contemplative exercise of honouring my home.
I hope that the lesson that I have served up to myself here will change how I approach niggly little jobs in the future. A real call to action to fix, mend, tidy or whatever the requirement is at the time I notice it, as quickly as possible to restore calm and peace of mind.
More than likely whatever needs to be done will be done in a jiffy. The discomfit of procrastination and the energy it takes to maintain it, is so unnecessary.
Quietly Quaintrelle 