Author: samandoat

Got something that needs to be done?

Something you want to do?

But you are waiting, waiting for the right moment. Or when you feel like it. Or for permission?

I tell you now. You are never going to feel like it. The only person who can give you permission is you. And the only right moment is now .

One afternoon while I waited to have an X-ray, two women sat across from me. They were an interesting contrast. One lady sat straight in the chair, looked to be about fifty. The other, her friend, slumped over her knees and was probably about thirty.

The slumped lady was confiding to her friend that she really wanted to go back to school and get a degree in psychology, and her friend was providing her with all the reasons why she couldn’t and shouldn’t.

I wanted to speak up but I didn’t. I went back to school after nearly ten years and got my degree in biology, so I wanted to tell her to go for it. And I have since regretted I didn’t go further and pursue more courses.

This woman wanted permission. Oh how I can relate to that! Most women are taught to seek approval before we act.

So if you want to do something. Do it. Because you are never ever going to feel like it. It’s never going to be the right time. Few are going to be on your side. You have to just shut up and do it.

Laundry.

Ugh.

Ranks right up there with dishes, housework and throwing out the garbage. A hateful task.

But boy, can it pile up fast if you’re not paying attention. Suddenly you’re groping around for a pair of underware in your drawer and realizing, there ain’t none.

However, like all good laundry procrastinators, my excuse is, the pile has to age properly first.

I know.

Just shut up and do it!

I think what is much worse however, are the people who do their laundry and then let it sit in the laundry room overnight or, days, and never collect it. So inevitably someone else needs a washer or dryer and heaps the stuff on the counters. UGH.

I never go to our laundry room on Mondays, because after a weekend of such abuses, it is not a pretty place.

One of my motto’s for years has been Just shut up and do it!

I apply it to most anything I hate doing, am lazy about doing, have tantrums about doing and also, to things I love doing, but procrastinate.

It takes me much longer to think about doing something, than to actually do it.

I can waste days thinking about cleaning up a mess that when tackled, took only five or ten minutes to rectify.

I can let dishes pile up, when really, it only takes maybe twenty minutes to wash.

Sometimes, I admit, I like to torture myself and not do things. I have no idea why, except it feels a thousand times more wonderful when I finally just stop my whining and do it. Sort of like in romantic relationships where making up was worth the breaking up part.

How did we ever go from the molehill (albeit a very serious one) of a pandemic of a deadly disease that we need to protect ourselves against (with social distancing, masks and vaccines) to a mountain, where this temporary situation is somehow going to result in a dystopian brave new world society?

Like holy cow. What the F?

Seriously people, you need to stick to what is really going on and address that. Not let your colourful imaginations take you down bottomless rabbit holes.

We have to surrender freedoms in this case in order to stay alive.

It is not complicated.

We have a zillion rules and regulations which we must abide by to stay healthy. We have building codes so that our dwellings don’t fall down. Automobile laws so we are safe when we drive. Food inspectors so we don’t die eating at a restaurant. We need vaccines to go on vacations to foreign lands. All these things are to protect us.

A lot of rules and regulations we have because people can’t think for themselves, and often prove that they are a lawless mob, quite eager to infringe on the rights of others to get their way.

We have laws to protect ourselves from the lawless. We have to do this.

I’m not going to debate about whether this is right or wrong in the long term. It is what makes our society work right now, until we find something better.

Yes, sometimes we need to question things, but when you do, for God sake, think about what you are questioning.

And it is not all about YOU. Not everyone agrees with you. You don’t speak for everyone, maybe not even a few of us.

I once had this great idea that I could wipe out a memory by revisiting it.

Long story short. It didn’t work.

I had very special memories of Montreal and a man I loved.

So I took the train to Montreal and decided to go back to some of the places that were particularly poignant and just wipe clean the memories. A purge, if you will.

But all it did was depress the hell out of me.

So much for that.

Here is the correct way to deal with such memories: see the good that came from the experiences that gave you those memories.

That love affair taught me so much, and is invaluable to who I am now.

And I still love Montreal.

And I guess, I still love him.

We have been hit with some nasty cold weather this January, the thermometer dipping close to -30 degrees centigrade, before the windchill!

I would have loved to gone out and snapped photographs of the trees covered in frost, but after some debate, decided this was not such a good idea. Not because of the extreme cold so much, as the ice underfoot.

But an awesome ice crystal mural was to be found in the bus shelter.

Nature is an award winning artist!