But then comes Tuesday. And Tuesday is the day that I realize I actually have to DO this week. Expending all my go-getterness and my sunny disposition on Monday, Tuesday usually finds me as a homosapien version of Eeyore from Winnie the Pooh.
Part of my "clean it up" and "do it right" initiatives involves tackling nagging tasks that I have been putting off. For example, the shoes I have been meaning to return. Since Christmas. I proudly brought the shoes to work, packaged them, and was ready to mail them to the company, when I saw that I need the invoice number and the order number. I didn't have either of those. Well, I'll mail it anyway! But the voice in my head said, "Do it right."
Too often I complicate my own life by not doing things right the first time. Take, for example, the time last week where I was too lazy to make a grocery list. I walked home from the store only to realize I forgot bread, which I hear is a key ingredient in the sandwhiches I was planning to make that evening. I decided I would walk to the Italian market and get some bread. There was no bread. At an Italian market. How can you not have bread? Italians live on carbs! Delicious, delicious carbs. Regardless, I wandered for about an hour before having to walk back to the exact same grocery store I had visited that afternoon.
Trying to remember this lesson, I trudged back from lunch with my shoes, unable to mail them. I was sulking, when I few minutes later, I found the receipt with all the information I needed! I took this as a sign that the universe was happy with my "do it right" plan and prepared to send it after work.
Raise your hand if you love going to the Philadelphia post office! Anybody? Bueller?
As I stared at the line of 15 people or so I thought, "Surely I can cram this in a mailbox outside." But there was that voice again, "Take your time. Do it right." I stood on line for twenty minutes and when finally the postwoman said, "You need to take this to UPS," I'm pretty proud to say that I kept a smile on my face, even if my eyes said, "Just kill me, will you?"
All that aside, walking out of the UPS store, it was as if a weight had been lifted off my chest. Mostly, because I wasn't carrying that heavy box anymore. But partly, because I could cross that off my nagging errand list, and that I had done everything to the best of my ability. Of course, if it gets sent back to me, I'm sending them a spring-loaded pie.
Days like this test my resolve. How I would love to go back to my sneering, sour self. Randy Pausch, author of The Last Lecture, was a big proponent of solving the root of your problems, not the symptoms of them (ie Getting a job to solve the stress of your financial problems, rather than doing yoga). However, on days like this, sometimes the only advice I can give is that you buy yourself a pumpkin spice latte, sit in the park, and read Tina Fey's Bossypants for 10 minutes before you go back to work.
"You all are the cause of my jawline acne!"~Liz Lemon, 30 Rock
Clean it up :)
Do it right :/
Let it go :(
Photo from http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheEeyore
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