life

Admitting you’re in over your head is hard. It hurts. I don’t know anyone who enjoys it, and I don’t know any fellow perfectionists who can do it without feeling a great deal of shame, hesitation, or remorse.

This afternoon, I admitted that I was in over my head, and I pulled out a recommendation I’ve been sitting on for months — I called a professional housecleaning service, and have an appointment with the owner after I get back from my conference. We’re going to go over what parts of the house I could realistically ask a third-party service to clean, and if the cost is reasonable … bite the bullet, swallow my pride, and do it.

Just so everyone's clear: it's not you, it's me.

I have 'fond' (those are air quotes) memories in the past of people pronouncing "I'm leaving!" in a huff, while taking a big pause at the metaphorical door (these are online communities we're talking about here, so all doors are metaphorical) to see if anyone cried out "Noooo! Don't leave us!"

There's a difference between doing what I just described, and recognizing that you are overloaded and distracted and just pulling the plug without telling anyone ahead of time.

There are several simple signs that the crud has successfully knocked me on my ass, but the biggest sign of all is that I have been home since Friday night (and as of this writing it is now Tuesday afternoon) and though I have been on the couch most of that time, have I posted here?  No.  I’m just now feeling capable of stringing sentences together with some hope of achieving subject-verb agreement, and if I get wordy, even that’s gonna get a bit dicey.

I’ve been giving some thought to a piece of writing that works well this time of year, but I’m not sure I should / could do it.  It’s December, which means cards and year-end letters from friends are arriving in our mailbox, and also means it’s my turn to wonder if I should do one for my friends as well.

I’m unwilling to explain more at this time, but:

Just because something’s right doesn’t make it easy.

That’s all.

A little voice inside my head said,

“If there’s ever been a good time for this, it’s now…”