Sunday 6th April

Is to put things off, leave it till tomorrow, put it on the back burner, turn a blind eye to it, sweep it under the carpet, and worst of all to speak in clichés.  If you avoid tackling something that is important you often never actually get round to sorting it out.  Which may seem a solution in itself, but the problem is that these things don’t actually go away – or only very rarely.  Maybe you are the sort of person who can blithely accept a muddled existence, bills unpaid, shelves wonky, carpets un-hoovered, life un-sorted, but I cannot.  Things play on my mind, they nag and keep recurring in my little brain until I sort them out.

And it is the same at work.  I still like to prepare a list, even if it is simply routine stuff.  If a Vat return is due at the end of the month I like to prepare for it early, not on the last day possible.  There is an old mantra – do what you can daily then the weekly task is made easier, do what you can weekly and month-end is a doddle, and complete everything every month and at year-end you have very little to do.

But part of me longs to just let everything slide, who cares if things aren’t done.  A lawn that is un-mown will still be there next week, an unmade bed will still be unmade tomorrow morning etc:  and sometimes, very rarely I have a completely slobby day, I let the dishes pile up, the clutter collect, and still I am unhappy.  Even if I let things go I cannot stop my mind from telling me I really should do them.

And the greatest mistake of all is to think that none of it matters.  Of course, in the grand scheme (if there ever is one) of the Universe nothing really matters, whole galaxies will form and die and what happens on a little planet will mean diddly-squat.  But in another way everything we do, or don’t do matters; every action has a reaction and affects someone else, and even if you subscribe to the former view you still have to live in this world, on this planet, in this time, so just get off the sofa and do it.