Good Enough

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On New Year’s Eve we were in the middle of a decent movie when I heard the dishwasher finish up.

For the next 15 minutes I sat there, trying to concentrate on the movie, doing my best to stay right where I was seated, and forgetting about the fact that the damn dishwasher needed to be emptied.

There was no reason to get up. We didn’t have a huge need for clean dishes before the end of the flick.

I had no chance.

I got up and emptied it.

“Couldn’t just leave it, huh?” Kathy asked, and I just grunted.

If I have a resolution for 2022 (and I don’t much believe in them) it’s that I learn to lighten up.

Not as easy as it sounds.

I’ve been fighting it all my life.

And I have a theory that Covid made changes to far more people than those who got sick from it.

When we were forced to change how we went to work, millions of people looked at their lives and wondered:

“Why?”

“Why am I killing myself at work?”

“Am I enjoying my life?”

Many in the service industries bailed out. Nurses and doctors changed their schedules, re-thought their professions. 

People took early retirements. 

Others decided that a couple of 20-hour a week jobs was better than working 70 for one employer that paid them for 40.

Why sell your soul to the company store?

Which is not to say that people don’t want to work anymore. 

Unemployment is low. 

People have returned to the work force, but it seems that many have reconfigured their lives.

“You truly need to learn how to relax,” Kathy said. 

I grunted again.

“You don’t ever do it. You have to get to a point in the day where the work you’ve put in that day is good enough.”

I didn’t answer. 

Sometimes I feel as if there’s no choice, but lately, I’ve at least been thinking about it.

Sometimes good enough is enough.

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