Momentum

Momentum is a funny thing.  Once I get some, it's hard to stop me.  Strangely though, my momentum has a sense of inertia - if I change my general activity, I loose all impetus.  In January we were remodeling two rooms in our house.  The place was a construction zone mess and I didn't even try to do more than the minimum cleaning because there was no point.  In January, I read a lot.  I wrote a little.  I enjoyed January.  The trajectory of my momentum was quite pleasant.

In February, our remodel was finished. I had to pay a little more attention to the things I neglected in January.  I've only read one book instead of the five I finished last month.  I've barely written anything.  I've taken almost no pictures.  I HAVE cleaned most of my house fairly well and recovered from the construction mess.  Today, I went to switch from housecleaning mode to blogging and discovered I was just loafing around Facebook.  Then I started a computer maintenance project that has been nagging but isn't urgent, it was just a way of procrastinating.  I lost momentum.

So, I hit reset.  I strapped my laptop to my treadmill, closed everything but blogger and here I am, walking and deciding which of my posts-in-progress I'd like to work on first.  (Does anybody else think a little better when they're moving?)

One random thought:  Most people love the movie Finding Nemo.  It is one of my favorites.  One of the best moments is when Dory sings "just keep swimming, just keep swimming".  It became my motto during some rough days when I had three small kids and the great recession was eating us alive.  Recently though, I realized I was applying it in a defeatist way.  Instead of encouraging myself with it, I was  coming to think of "swimming" as drudgery.  Just getting by.  That's no way to go through life.  Another favorite movie quote sprang to mind.  Its from The Big Lebowski, and when I thought of it,  I immediately thought "But, today I'm going to eat the bear!" I like that idea.  It feels powerful and positive.  When I find I'm loosing momentum, I'm going to remind myself that I'm not just swimming along, I'm gonna eat that bear!