'Ff'lo (fflo) wrote,

Maybe there's a way to stop thinking of them as obligations.

I'm in a kind of caffeine haze---lots of it coursing through the bloodstream right now, and somehow I'm convinced it's tiring---in the middle of a long weekend Sunday.

Switching among tabs I have up, I recall that yesterday I was clicking through some old entries here, trying to find the record cover meme that went around blogland years ago and is now popping up among my facebook friends. I'm clicking through some of 2005, but maybe it wasn't that long ago. Today I saw the shelter pic of my now-dead Humphrey. His whole kitty life has happened, and since I've been in this house. A lot has happened since I've been in this house. Sometimes I think nothing was happening since I've been in this house, besides me getting in debt. Some way to look at it!

But speaking of ways of looking at things, my subject line is about things I want to do getting an onerousness when I feel or decide or recognize or take the point of view that I "have to" do them. The tug of war with obligation is a theme that runs way back for me. I even used to think when I was a kid that everyone hates having to do anything, and rebelling against being pressed to a behavior, like against being forbidden to engage in a behavior, of course is a primary human impulse, and a struggle for all, and probably even the central motivation for the majority of impulses, compulsions, choices, behaviors. I certainly aligned myself early on with others who had chips on their shoulders that way too.

At breakfast today dreampower was talking about how one side of her family of origin had that "no idleness" imperative. There's a thread of that imperative on my mother's side of the family, or at least in her. It's rather something to think about, that thing.

Ah, life. There's not only plenty to learn now that I've got a lot of it behind me; there's some stuff for which I need the years as a prerequisite.

Not among that stuff, though, is how to fix a toilet. In the coming days I'll be learning how to fix a toilet. Kind of exciting, in a way. Like, okay, now I'm going to learn that thing, finally, that mysterious thing that maybe isn't so terribly complicated, not as impossible as it's rumored to be. At least I hope not. Smiley face.

Maybe it's the euphoric effects of the caffeine, but I feel pretty peaceful this afternoon, in this bit of resting space between and among obligations, commitments, necessities.
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