Things I Hate

I don't know if any of you have this problem, but I have this terrible tendency to keep signing up to do things that I hate. I'll sign up to do something I hate, and I'll do the thing, hating every minute of it and allowing it to poison every waking moment of my life, and I'll vow to myself and to anyone who will listen that I'll never EVER take on this Loathsome Task again, and then (this is the bizarre part): a few months later there I am, signing up to do the very same Loathsome Task.

How can this be?

Part of it is that, like most of us, I have the blessed ability to forget how terrible something is once it's over. I've heard it said that the only reason any woman has a second child is that she forgets how terrible labor and childbirth were the first time around, and by the time she remembers, it's too late.

I'm also sometimes paid a lot of money to do the hateful and terrible thing.

I also start to tell myself that THIS time, I'm going to be able to control how terrible the hateful thing is. Okay, it's hateful, but that doesn't mean I have to let it poison every waking moment, does it? What if I just DID the hateful thing, for the relatively few hours that it takes to do it, and skipped the part where I think about how much I hate it, and tell everybody how much I hate it, and dread doing it because I hate it so much. That could work, right? Isn't the hateful thing only hateful because I've made it hateful? Because I've allowed myself to hate it? What if I just DID it without hating it so much?

So that's what I tell myself. And now I have the hateful thing to do today, after having dreaded it and postponed it and allowed it to poison every waking moment of my life. Again.

Here is my vow: I am never again going to sign up to do something that I hate. I'm going to file this under the heading: "Life Is Too Short." I'm going to re-read this blog entry once a month, maybe even once a week, in case I am in any danger of forgetting.

Dear readers, do not sign up to do something you hate! Really. Don't do it. Life is too short to sign up to do something you hate.