I should be asleep. Barring that, I should be reading for my comps. Or doing laundry. Or something productive.
Instead, I am sitting on the loveseat, indulging in a guilty pleasure.
I feel like I am trapped in shoulds. Shoot, I know I am. I should be a better teacher, better student, better mother. My house should be neater, my papers graded faster, I should be thinner, more patient.
I am completely aware that my expectations are excessive. If anyone else were trying to do everything I try to do, I would tell them that they are nuts. I, however, feel that I ought to manage.
And really, I should. You know, my great grandmothers raised everything their families put in their mouths. They got up before everyone else so that there was breakfast before they went out to the fields to work. They built fires to cook on and hauled water to cook with and wash up with. They hauled their laundry to the creek to wash it on a rub board for god's sake.
Comps? I should be able to breeze through them, right? With one hand on a mop and the other grasping an outline for the perfect answer? Whatever.
3 comments:
Those grandmothers gave you a serious guilt-dose. So did mine.
After all this time, all we did was change the nature of our work. Comps are your rub board.
Suppose you got better and thinner and faster and more patient. What then? Might as well sit down now and indulge.
I needed to read that. It sounded remarkably like the argument that I was having with myself earlier.
I hear ya. You might want to take a look at my blog.
www.therootedpasque.blogspot.com
The current posts for the 24 hour day, are pretty much the stuff I yell at the TV when pundits, specialists or a storyline get to me.
The trick is to not feel guilty during the downtime, but how do you that when your "things to do list" is staring you in the face.
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