Life is plodding
the sacred mundane
A few years ago while going through a pretty serious rough patch, my mom remarked to me that, “Sometimes I want to just tell God to stuff it. I don’t want to learn anything else. I’m done.” Lately, I’ve been trying to learn a new balance between, “God why is everything so awful and hard all the time?” and “What else is life?” From hard thing to joyful thing to awful thing to contented moment, those aren’t things and moments to get through so I can live an enchanted life. They are eudaemonia.
Anyway, with the construction finished and my office more or less set up, I’m trying to actually clean the rest of the house. I set it up so I focus on one room a day. Ten years ago, the house would have been clean in a week and show-ready in ten days. Not so much now.
Tonight I worked in the laundry room. I mean, I made dinner and ate, then played on my phone. THEN I worked in the laundry room. I made good progress in a tiny 5x2 corner of the room. Another 1/3 of the room went from chaotic mess to ordered stacks to be delivered to other places. Tools, painting supplies, enough screws to build another house. But it’s sorted and stacked. I used about half a barrel of disinfecting wipes cleaning dust from the tops of bins. Eventually it triggered an asthma attack, and I had to call it a night.
There’s a car load to give away and a massive bag of trash. Apart from moving those along, I’m not going to do anything else in there until next Monday unless I just have time. This process is going to take several iterations, and that’s going to have to be good enough. I need to work with the kids in their rooms before they go back to school, and I need to cook and eat every day apparently. I think that’s an awful lot of effort in this summer heat, and I'd like to speak with the head of design for my meat sack.
This constant demand of “feed me,” “move me,” “rest me” is ridiculous. I mean make up my mind, tell me what you want. I’m busy here.
Anyway, dinner was a chicken & prosciutto caesar salad, and it was honestly delicious. Dust and crispy prosciutto, sweat and parmesan and even the asthma. These are the good life.
Thank you. I learned a new word: Eudaemonia (also spelled eudaimonia) is an ancient Greek word meaning human flourishing, well-being, and living well. It combines the roots eu ("good") and daimon ("spirit" or "divine power"). Rather than a temporary emotional state like joy or pleasure, it describes a lifelong state of realizing one's true potential and acting with good character.