aversion

These are some of my avoidance strategies. I clean the top of the fridge. I wash not only the dog but his three beds. I degrunge the washing machine. I dust skirting boards. Nearly a month passes and I do anything but sit down and open the documents.

I might be officially unemployed, but I have a job to do. It’s a contract job for my one-man business, writing template documents for youth mentoring programs. I can’t explain the aversion to getting on with it. It’s irrational, perverse, and a big worry. I need the money and I don’t need the daily stress I heap on myself.

Part of my aversion is that I am no longer the regional expert on all things to do with youth mentoring—my position for four years that recently ended—that landed me the template-writing job. I’m over it. My good woman sees far deeper meaning here. She thinks I can’t let go: that in not completing the templates I’m hanging on to a shred of who I was and what defined me.

The reason matters not: I must do this job. And do it now. The hardest part is simply opening the last document I worked on and starting again. When I do, it will be all right. It will all fall into place. I will even enjoy the wordcraft, and wonder what held me up.

Rock on.