For years I have operated on the principle: Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow. Today my father's voice boomed into my head saying, "No! No! No! Do it today; don't put things off until tomorrow....why if I had....the hay would have been rained on and ruined....someone else would have bought that property.......(ad nauseum)". The problem with putting things off, or at least one of the many problems raised, is that once you start a project all the pieces involved migrate out of sight as soon as you leave the room. I had a project all ready to mail just last seven months ago and now I can't find all the parts, proving my point that like mice, they travel when you are least apt to see them.
When I find shoes that fit, and I like them, I usually buy them in each color (I have a wide foot and a high instep so am limited as to selection that fits). I add them to the boxes piled up in my closet, neatly marked with the date and shoe description on the box, often with a picture of the shoe as it came from the store. I'm proud that I almost always put shoes back in the right box. Somehow they also seem to migrate to strange boxes at night. In fact, they are uncanny. A shoe I don't want to wear is always the first found but not the one I planned to wear. Today a new problem appeared. I put on a pair of never worn shoes (They couldn't have been more than a mere ten years old) and after walking through a few rooms, the soles felt like something had shifted. When I lifted my foot, a saw a trail of spongy stuff across the tile floor. The entire spongy sole and heel had deteriorated leaving a space under my foot through which I could see light, as in a tunnel. Had I worn them daily for months, I might have beaten the decomposition. Then my father wouldn't have to be saying, "I told you so." from wherever he is mumbling in my head.
Each day I promise myself I will read through that humongous pile of mail that is dropped and properly dispose each piece. Too often, my don't-do-today-what-you-can-do-tomorrow grabs hold and I can't face another catalog, request to save the world, buy a magazine at a discount rate, pay a bill, or whatever the day's waste of trees drops on me. The piles get higher and the tomorrows just keep adding up until I need the table and just take everything and make one huge pile that "I will look through someday soon." Usually I do manage to throw away catalogs as the season finally changes, otherwise I'm not sure I would still have room to live here.
Today I have resolved to do better tomorrow and will now go to bed and sleep on that vision, hoping I will remember it in the morning.
2 comments:
One of the best investments that I ever made in my own office was the shredder! My desk sometimes gets way beyond reality in terms of in-box and out go. The people who work with me cannot understand, "How can you clean up all that paperwork like that. What if you shred something "important"?!?!!"...If it was all that important, then it wouldn't be languishing on the desk.
You must have gremlins from the same family that I do.
Happy Holidays,
Anne Steward Hall
Post a Comment