some stubborn schmutz

~ what I want is ________, and paddle your own canoe, eh!

That stubborn, grimy smear on the corner of my desk is not the problem.

Is it an excuse, or have I just not found the right cleanser?

I want it gone.

It’s not harming anything, but it’s there on my landscape, and I want it gone …

Yes, it’s a sign, a metaphor, but it resonates. And it stares at me every morning …

Of the many hundreds of distractions in any given day or week, I know I keep tinkering or scrubbing away on too many of the distractions and not enough focus on the big icebergs. It’s a reality I can’t avoid, and the more pressing some issues are, the more tempting the distractions appear. Temporary relief, it’s not avoidance or denial - it’s reality. Not yours or anyone else’s … just mine.

It’s comforting to learn that I’m not alone

Morning light catches a faint smudge on the corner of my desk.

What?

Still, I thought I got that off completely!

It looks like glue residue, but it is not sticky. It’s not like regular schmutz, gone with a s wet wiping or two …

It lingers. Invites fussing. I’ve told myself many times, it doesn’t matter. It’s just a dirty-looking mark that is really clean … it should be, I’ve worked on it many times, but it’s annoying like that pile of to-do work … it won’t go away, it’s stubborn and relentless.

No matter how late I work, how much I try to cram into my day or weekend, it’s still there, as if it’s speaking to me, “I’m still here,” because it won’t go away.

Real work waits every time I am distracted by anything/everything that excuses me from continued focus on the tasks, the problems du jour …

The schmutz stain is not a big thing, but it’s a metaphor for a thousand other ‘not a big thing’ that pushes back, pushes around in my head …..

I confess.

All day, every day. No costume. No borrowed voice.

I lack the energy or creativity to manage being someone else.

But the residue remains, on the desk and in the mind.

That is fine. Leave it. Begin anyway. If it truly matters, it will still be there when the work is done.

If it does not, it was only noise with a shine.

Your turn: name the __________ ; what’s your blank, what’s your distraction that grips you, cripples you, paralyzes your ability to grind through what must be ground through and say NO more effectively to anything else, any new ask or distraction?

Then act.

You can let that mark sit, or move the needle to the next thing atop the pile.

As for this Mark, gotta get busy, so much to do in my busy head, but I can’t be in my head when it needs to be focused on the task, the next task, the next, the next after that and the ‘update’ on everything that is not done must be reduced by the end of the day, a ‘state/status of everything’ before tomorrow comes.

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I’ve read a lot of advice on this kind of thing … I am this kind of thing .. that explains what we feed with attention and intention grows. Even the grime. The test, I think, of anything resembling a solution is, at best, a tool. It’s a piece of structure, process or organizing-differently. Each twist, quirk or ‘new way’ makes progress happen somehow for a while, until it doesn’t. And then I try something new. That’s not a strategy, it’s not a process either - it’s ‘what is’ until I find the next stubborn distraction I can’t get rid of.

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I know, I know, this was a perfectly unspoiled page I sprayed with toner upon the blankness of as if I was applying watercolour to parchment … without a clear ‘how to’ to it; I know the why, I know the consequences of all of this, and sometimes it feels like I’m paddling a canoe through too much mucuk and too little water and no vertical drop because I’m pushing upstream!

And as always has been true, I’ve never paddled a canoe.

I made this up. To make a point.

Or maybe I’m just delaying rubbing out a smudge on the corner of my desk.

I know I struggle with this every day. I thought writing about it this morning might be helpful for someone dealing with a similar struggle, or if they know someone who is paddling their canoe, but it has helped me focus on what I must do today.

I sometimes feel like I’m paddling upstream through rapids with some cheerleaders pushing my spirits upward, while critics and reality are yelling at me to turn around and paddle downstream …

But any fool can do that.