An Answer for Everything

With an angry tone she said If you can’t do a job right, then don’t do it at all!

That line pretty much summed up my mother’s philosophy in life: nothing is worth doing unless it is done well.

For the last month my blog has remained silent. My tasking exceeded multi and stepped into the realm of exponential. When I awoke in the morning I was faced with a difficult choice: to spend an hour keyboarding my thoughts into Word or to take a shower, brush my teeth and get dressed.

I chose the latter.

Because when you are being pulled in infinite directions the latter is the most pragmatic road—not to mention the most hygienic. An added factor to the conundrum is the difficulty in stringing two coherent sentences together when you are two plates full.

But the time away from the page has given me pause to think. It has given me time to reflect on my goals and the importance of sharing what is stirred up in my brain. I contemplated ceasing my avocation. Because while life has calmed down, my solitary plate is still rather full. And I am resolute in producing a high quality product which involves concentrated effort. I weighed standards versus volume.

The conclusion was that I still enjoyed expelling and sharing my thoughts too much to completely abdicate my self-made throne.  And so the new plan is this: to scale back and produce a weekly instead of a daily blog post with the proviso that as CEO of this non money making operation I may always add bonus blog posts as I see fit. Because as the rapper Bobby Brown sings it’s my prerogative.

And so beginning next Tuesday I will begin a weekly blog. I have chosen Tuesdays because it is the most random day of the week. Entropy is key: random thoughts deserve a random day.

And I will admit that sometimes I did a really poor job with my designated chores as a child just to hear my mother say if you cannot do a job right then don’t do it at all. I hoped she would focus on the don’t do it at all part—I hoped she would permanently release me from my required tasks.

But my mother was smarter than that. Because she added a corollary to her thesis—an inescapable irrevocable clause. Her part B was if at first you don’t succeed try try again.

Proving once again: mothers have an answer for everything.