Sunday, September 16, 2007

Want Ad

I have a leaky faucet in my kitchen, and it's driving me out of my mind. I have a very hard time ignoring drippy kinds of noises. It feels like a constant, rhythmic poking at my brain, and and I cannot summon the amount of focus I need to just let it fade into the background. Instead, each drip dances before my eyes, pulls on my earlobes, blows on my nose. I'm pretty sure there is a name for this condition.

Today, I call this condition Laziness and also Being a Grad Student. I know how to fix the stupid, drippy faucet. It wouldn't really take more than an hour, and that includes the time it would take to run to the hardware store and pick up the washer I need. I just don't have the time. I mean, I have plenty of time. I'm swimming in hours in which I'm not working. But I have not one minute of the day in which I feel it's a good idea to start a project like fixing a leaky faucet because no matter what I'm doing, I should be working. I cannot possibly do the laundry or rearrange the filing cabinet or run to the grocery. I cannot do all those Living Life things because that would be admitting that I don't intend to work at all.

I do intend to work. In fact, intend is about all I do these days. I'm a very good intender. My seventh-grade teacher, a stern Catholic nun about the size of sapling and with a very long ruler, used to mutter over and over again that "the path to hell is paved with good intentions." (She didn't have to be original; she was mean.) I'm pretty sure, though, that she was wrong. I think that hell may, in fact, be the land of good intentions. There's no trotting down the path left to be done. You're just stuck there, intending intending intending all day long, and yet somehow missing what it takes to just up and DO the damn work.

Or I'd be pretty sure of that if I believed in hell at all. Frustration makes me dramatic, and right now, I'm frustrating myself like I can't tell you. If anyone has any discipline to spare, let me know. I'll pay a premium, even if it's used.

4 Comments:

Blogger AS said...

No premium required. I've recently made it over a hump, or out of a big black hole actually, have some discipline to spare. Will send it on its way... :o)

9:56 AM  
Blogger wwwmama said...

no discipline to share here, unless it's the kind that comes out of necessity, as in, oh shit, i have to eventually start grading this pile of crap because eventually my students will want to get it back.
i think i know that nun. or maybe she was an effective model so they churned out a bunch of her to teach the masses. no pun intended, i'm just tired and my tired brain thinks in bad puns.

4:37 PM  
Blogger Xtin said...

I'd like to place an order for one gross of discipline, premium.

Expedited. Express shipping.

Thank you.

11:49 AM  
Blogger Acre said...

I'd go in half with you on that order, Xtin, if I didn't think I'd need way more than my share.

3:11 PM  

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