Changing attitudes

Growing up, Saturday morning was chore morning. I'd put new sheets on my bed, vacuum, dust, and tidy my room, and take out all the trash in the house. I didn't like it - since I didn't know how unlivable a heavily dusted, un-vacuumed, messy room was, I didn't see the point of Saturday morning chores. And so I have a bit of a block against dusting, vacuuming, and tidying - Helen and I have a maid come biweekly to do the vacuuming, dusting, and cleaning.

But I've started to do something that looks suspiciously like doing chores: I've started to block out time with the simple goal of making my life better. If I have a weekend chunk of time free, I just walk around thinking "What would make my life better?" and then I do it! It might be filing the stack of papers on my desk, it might be breaking down boxes and bringing them to recycling, it might be recycling old magazines, and it might be rearranging the food on the shelves. It might be going through the Wii remotes and putting new batteries in and charging them. Since I'm setting out with the goal of making my life better, I'm happy, energetic, and almost bouncing like Tigger.

Here's the funny thing to me: I don't like chores. But these things I'm doing are chores - and I'm doing them happily.