Today, I began a renovation project that I had dreamed of and dreaded for years. I anticipated it was going to take so much dreadful effort that I had put it off and suffered the interminable nothingness of not starting. Until today…when it took exactly an hour to strip off the wallpaper below the chair rail in the dining room that has been there for ten years.
As I was squirting water on the minimal remaining paper backing of the removed wallpaper, I wasn’t thinking about how much money I’d spent on this expensive grass paper that I was now heedlessly ripping from the wall because the cat had started to use it as a scratching post. No, I was thinking, what took me so long? The answer was dread.
Dread is just another form of fear. It is fear of the unknown, of risk, of f-ing up because of unknown factors that always happen because it’s life. It’s like a daily standard operation system for fear. Procrastination is a result of dread but not a cause. Fortune telling of disaster is what dread is made of.
This smacking of dreadful effort was what kept me from redoing the hallway which now looks fantabulous. It is keeping me from organizing myself for the magazine submission process. And keeping me from pulling out my sewing machine these days to make new flag for my front porch. And quite honestly, was what kept me from having that second baby until I was 46. But I can truly say that in so many other realms of my life, I am excited and looking forward to my endeavors. So let me bask in the glory of a soon to be renovated dining room. And let me remember this feeling of righteousness when I want to strike up the next big project Because apparently, anything I put my mind to gets done. I just have to go ahead and buy the paint, and perhaps a rug, to move me on.
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