What one can do.

[mrissa]

One can only do what one can do, and tonight my brain is running off an all sorts of tangents whenever I try to get back to the rewrites "The Last Egg" -- useful tangents, to be sure, but tangents nonetheless. I cannot put the entire Russian Empire in this story. It will ruin it if I try.

So instead I took the dog and the markgritter for a walk and am going to go down and read Grim Tuesday, as soon as I finish this scenelet on All the Ones We Could Not Reach, which is not at all what I thought it would be when porphyrin made it for me. It is not, for example, science fiction, or a short story, or for adults. That's a lot of things for it not to be, when you think about it; I often say my main useful talent is getting the wrong end of the stick, but that's pretty wrong, even for me.

Back a bit, this is a useful thing to remember, though: one can only do what one can do. Sometimes one can explain the one million-and-first time after explaining something one million times before. Sometimes one can't. Sometimes one can argue a point, or mop the floor, or keep one's temper, or make bread. And sometimes one can't, and it's better to go off and do something else and come around to it later, whenever later can be.

I have a friend who drives himself mad and does more or less nothing, because he can't do everything. Because the problems of the world are too big to get at all at once, and everything else feels to him like a Band-Aid on a gut wound. But it doesn't help anything for him to go around in circles with it. You just grab an end and start, and sometimes it's not the end you expected.

Comments

[batwrangler.livejournal.com]

If you are going to read Grim Tuesday, does that mean you've already read Mister Monday? And did you post about it?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I have already read it, and I don't think I posted in detail except to blame zwol and his NOLJ friends for getting me started with it.

The thing that I'm still having to get straight in my head is that the Norse gods have nothing to do with this, despite the names of the days of the week being involved. Tyr had nothing to do with Grim Tuesday, even though I can do all sorts of grim Tyr-ish things.

Hmm. What my books really need is more Tyr.

I may regret saying that.

[one-undone.livejournal.com]

The FlyLady says that's why we have messy houses (many of us who do), because we get overwhelmed with the sheer number of things that need to be done and so we do nothing, because we can't do everything and do it perfectly, and that just lets it all get worse. I like her because she tells us basically what you just said, to do what you can do (she advises to do what you can do for 15 minutes, and be satisfied that you've done SOMETHING). Really, it's sensible and good advice. It does feel like the world is going to swallow you whole some days if you think of everything like that friend of yours does, and it really can paralyze you.

Sometimes you start to make pralines and realize your evaporated milk expired last year, and the sugar's already in the pot, and you have to stop anyway (that happened tonight). What can you do? Life goes on. Sometimes one can make pralines, and sometimes one can't. I'll try again tomorrow.

:-P

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Trying again tomorrow is the thing, I think.

Our house isn't very messy by fannish standards. Some of that is that some of the people we'd compare ourselves with have kids, and kids are a major mess-source. But some of it is that I think I'm very good at doing little tasks while I'm in the middle of something else -- go downstairs to fix myself breakfast and bag the recycling or unload the dishwasher, that kind of thing. One task at a time really does work.

[one-undone.livejournal.com]

No, I must agree, your house is SPOTLESS, especially by fannish standards. I think there's something to do with a lack of a) children and b) cats. I don't know what the connection is, but it's there, I tell you. It's there.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I can always see more things that need cleaning/fixing up/neatening in our house, though. Always.

While the dog contributes to clutter (dog toys on the floor!!!), she can't, for example, jump on top of the bookshelves or the kitchen counter or...etc. And our particular dog doesn't shed. So that probably helps a good deal.

[pameladean]

Your house is gloriously tidy and yet one is not afraid to sit on the furniture. I can hardly offer higher praise.

Another important element in tidiness is having sufficienet storatge space. That's what we don't have, and everything cascades from there.

P.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Well, thank you for the high praise.

We're trying to keep ahead of the storage space problem, but heaven knows I sympathize with people who aren't ahead of it. I'm not even any kind of "saver," compared to a lot of people I know, and Stuff seems to keep appearing. ("Saver" is an attempt to use a more neutral term than "hoarder" or "packrat." What else do you call it if you're not sneering at it? "Keeper"? "Archivist" seems like a bit much under most circumstances.)

[mkille.livejournal.com]

Preservationist.