Maintenance

Given the infrequency at which I update this blog, you’d be hard pressed to believe that my passion is to write. Indeed, every time I sit down to craft a post, I end up tinkering with the design and layout of the site instead. I have a few new designs in various stages of completion, but none that I am completely happy with as yet. Perhaps I’ve fallen into the trap of thinking that once I have my setup “perfect,” I’ll be able to write.

It’s the same with trying to maintain the house. I am indeed blessed with a decent house and acreage. But maintaining the yard, landscape and living space is a constant struggle. There are any number of uncompleted projects awaiting my time and attention. Balancing family and job generally doesn’t leave much time for anything other than the bare necessities of home maintenance. Yet I keep thinking that once I get A and B done, then I can do C and D, which will make things so much better. But so often, A and B never quite get done. So I end up settling for bare minimums of maintenance, and don’t move forward and produce.

Maintenance is important, to be sure. But so is progress. Avoiding the disillusionment that comes with lack of progress is hard for me. It affects my motivation to do maintenance. I find that to be true in many areas of my life. I wonder if it would be better to focus maintenance on those things that enable me to move forward, as opposed to that which doesn’t produce anything more than the status quo. Could it be that the most important things to maintain are those things which, in the end, enable me to produce and grow? There’s a spiritual discipline in there somewhere.

Maybe there is something to the motto that my brother-in-law once adopted from Walt Disney. “Keep moving forward.” Maybe I need to take that more seriously.