Was sitting around in some sort of fugue state a few days ago. Sighing, internal whining, woe is me, I don’t feel like doing anything. But there was a pile of dishes 8 miles high in the kitchen. My laundry was backed up to the point where I was wearing clothes that I wouldn’t even donate to the Salvation Army.

An epiphany occurred. With my particular mental iffy mental state complicated by meds that cause sedation, if I wait until I “feel” like doing something to do it, I may just sit around on ever my ever-increasing back side for days or weeks on end. Taking meds with weight gain as a side effect and impersonating a 2 toed sloth will do that to a woman.

Husband also helped motivate me to get up and about by getting sick. I couldn’t get my ass in gear for myself, but I did manage to get it together enough to try to care for him because I love the big Lug. Bring him a soda or some chicken broth, whatever his little heart desired.

What happened then was a statement came to mind that I used to use on children and then later on employees. “You don’t have to want to do it, like doing it, or feel like doing it, you just have to do it, period, end of discussion.”

For most activities the result will be satisfactory. Maybe not the best ever, but good enough for now. Who ever came up with that slogan “just do it!” (I think it was Nike, but don’t quote me on this) was really on to something. It can just really be that simple.

Don’t wanna get out of bed, well do it anyway. Don’t have to plan the whole day, just stand up. Once your up and staggering around, chances are your limbic brain will head towards the kitchen looking for coffee. Don’t feel like getting dressed, well do it anyway, tough noogies. When already dressed, it’s much less daunting to move on to more ambitious goals like leaving the house, getting behind the wheel of a car, running errands, going shopping.

For me not wanting to go shopping is a warning sign of trouble around the next curve as glaring as another person’s decision to paint a mural on the living room wall using eye makeup. I actually did that when I was a kid. My Mom laughs about it now….

Another thing I did as a kid was decorate the fenders of Mom’s car with stick on daisies. The kind that people used to glue on the shower floor to prevent slipping. I thought it was cool. Guess I’ve always tended to the eccentric artistic side, even as a young child. She decided to leave the flowers there and went tooling around South Miami in the 60’s in a flower power car. Hee Hee. Impulse control is not one of my strong suites.

As an adult I’ve stifled those urges to the point where they rarely come out. I know logically that it’s probably not a good idea to paint a mural on or in someone’s house without their prior consent. But hey, what about my house? Bleh, Hubman would have a stroke if I did that. Sometimes being an adult just plain bites! I could do it on a wall in my office? Wow, that would be way fun. And a renewable canvas, just paint over it and start again.

Back to the do it anyway even when I don’t feel like it. For the past few days I’ve gotten out of bed when I woke up, made the bed, made coffee, got dressed, put on make up, wrote on my book for an hour, and actually left the house for no other reason than I wanted some new spring colored eye shadow. I didn’t wait until it was an emergency to leave the house. How cool is that? May sound like nothing to a functioning person, but for me this is a huge step towards getting back in the game.

I’m also making plans to travel again. I want to go visit my relatives in New Orleans before it gets too hot. My Mom is not into air conditioning so a visit to her in the high on summer time is a rather sweaty business. I need to get right on this as soon as possible. Will start packing today!