Life Glee / Getting in the Way of Yourself

Waiting for the conditions to be right

The good version of the moment is being postponed in favour of a better version that rarely arrives.

The garden will be enjoyable once it is tidy. The walk will be worth it when the weather improves. The good chair is for later, when the work is done. Each of these postpones something available now in favour of a hypothetical better version, and the better version is competing with an actual one and losing on availability. The tidy garden may arrive in three weeks. The untidy garden is out there this afternoon and is about eighty percent as good, which is a very high proportion of the thing.

This is worth watching because it disguises itself as sensible sequencing rather than avoidance. Finish first, enjoy after, which sounds responsible and would be fine if the finishing ever finished. In practice the work list regenerates, and the reward that was scheduled for afterwards is permanently one step further along. Taking the eighty percent version now is not a failure of standards. It is the only version that actually gets had.

The same applies to weather, which is the most common excuse and the least defensible, since bad weather is one of the more interesting conditions to be out in and the discomfort ends the moment you are inside again. Conditions are almost never right. They are usually adequate, which has always been enough, and adequate is available today.