Thoughts on Repetition
One of the reasons that laundry and keeping the kitchen clean frustrate me so much and leave me feeling like I haven't accomplished anything at all despite the investment of monumentous effort is that they are tasks that require repetition.
I've never been good at repetition... well, no, that's not quite true. I knit. and I spin. .. those both require repetition. A lot of repetition. But each stitch builds on the prior body of work and at the end I have something bigger and better than I had before.
Not so with the kitchen! Not so with the laundry!! Every day I wash the same dishes just to restore the balance I had before I started. Every week I wash the same clothes I washed the week before. The kitchen and the laundry are my Rock of Sisyphus. Every day the same toil for the same lack of progress.
I've never been good at meaningless repetition.. In high school I got C's where I should have gotten A's simply because I didn't do the homework. I didn't need to. I read the books, worked a problem or two, and comprehended the information. I demonstrated proficiency, I passed the tests with ease. I'd always been told the homework was a tool for teaching the concepts, so once I understood those, I saw no value in wasting my time and attention on the monotonous rote work of the homework assignments.
Somehow, in my teenaged brilliance and vast life experience, I neglected to comprehend that learning to tolerate, even embrace monotonous repetition was a necessary and valuable life skill on its own merits. That it would come in handy for balancing a checkbook, cleaning up the kitchen every night, and making the bed every morning.
In fact, I must admit that being a brilliant, quick-study teenager has left another type of footprint in my life as well. It has left me with the unrealistic belief that Envisioning and Comprehending are as good as Doing. This means that if I've bought the yarn for the shawl then it will somehow manifest itself into said shawl by the time that I need one. If I've set my mind to go to a fiber conference, then I'm going--never mind the detail of submitting the admissions paperwork. If I've put food into the microwave, then I've had lunch. (This one really confuses me when I open the microwave later and realize that I'm actually still hungry.)
In order to succeed at my long-term goals of running a clean and efficient household, I will need to carve my Rock of Sisyphus into something more useful.. like a wagon-wheel, perhaps. Rolling the rock itself up the hill every night is not likely to bring me deep satisfaction and joy in itself, but if the cultivation of rock-rolling habits can be fashioned into a useful tool for moving my life in the direction I wish it to go, then perhaps the rock is useful after all.
I've never been good at repetition... well, no, that's not quite true. I knit. and I spin. .. those both require repetition. A lot of repetition. But each stitch builds on the prior body of work and at the end I have something bigger and better than I had before.
Not so with the kitchen! Not so with the laundry!! Every day I wash the same dishes just to restore the balance I had before I started. Every week I wash the same clothes I washed the week before. The kitchen and the laundry are my Rock of Sisyphus. Every day the same toil for the same lack of progress.
I've never been good at meaningless repetition.. In high school I got C's where I should have gotten A's simply because I didn't do the homework. I didn't need to. I read the books, worked a problem or two, and comprehended the information. I demonstrated proficiency, I passed the tests with ease. I'd always been told the homework was a tool for teaching the concepts, so once I understood those, I saw no value in wasting my time and attention on the monotonous rote work of the homework assignments.
Somehow, in my teenaged brilliance and vast life experience, I neglected to comprehend that learning to tolerate, even embrace monotonous repetition was a necessary and valuable life skill on its own merits. That it would come in handy for balancing a checkbook, cleaning up the kitchen every night, and making the bed every morning.
In fact, I must admit that being a brilliant, quick-study teenager has left another type of footprint in my life as well. It has left me with the unrealistic belief that Envisioning and Comprehending are as good as Doing. This means that if I've bought the yarn for the shawl then it will somehow manifest itself into said shawl by the time that I need one. If I've set my mind to go to a fiber conference, then I'm going--never mind the detail of submitting the admissions paperwork. If I've put food into the microwave, then I've had lunch. (This one really confuses me when I open the microwave later and realize that I'm actually still hungry.)
In order to succeed at my long-term goals of running a clean and efficient household, I will need to carve my Rock of Sisyphus into something more useful.. like a wagon-wheel, perhaps. Rolling the rock itself up the hill every night is not likely to bring me deep satisfaction and joy in itself, but if the cultivation of rock-rolling habits can be fashioned into a useful tool for moving my life in the direction I wish it to go, then perhaps the rock is useful after all.
posted by Peacock at 3:14 PM
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