For a long time, my storage building has needed painting. Particularly, the door needs painting. Painting is a warm weather job, mostly, because, honestly, who wants to paint with a cold north wind numbing hands and nose? No longer do I want to look at that storage room with the peeling paint and think, “I should have painted it, I would have painted it, but…I could have painted it, if…” I want to look out my window and see a freshly painted, nicely covered storage building standing proudly, a monument to hard work and perseverance! Only thing is, it doesn’t happen by itself; it requires elbow grease, and I can usually find a lot of other, more pleasant things to do.
However, the fact is I don’t like painting! Oh, I enjoy the finished product after the job is done. But, doing it? Well, no. I love painting pictures but not rooms, porch posts, or storage buildings. It’s just one of those things that requires an effort in doing what I’d rather not do, simply because nobody else is going to and it’s gotta be done! Maybe, after I finish, I’ll reward myself with a cup of hot caramel mocha coffee, sort of dangle a carrot in front of my nose.
Now, logical reasoning would say, if the building needs painting, paint it and be done with it! I should be like that; however, I’m not. I procrastinate, make excuses, do other things, and the storage building stares at me accusingly.
The other day, I was chatting with a new friend at church and she asked me what I did before retiring.
“I was a teacher,” I answered.
“Oh,” she said, “and what do you do now?”
“I write,” I answered.
“How exciting!” she said. “Anything published?”
“Happily, yes,” I answered.
“I’ll bet you used to teach literature,” she said.
“No,” I said. “I taught kindergarten children.”
“What do you write?” she asked.
“I write cozy murder mysteries,” I answered.
She thought that was exceedingly funny. The two occupations, kindergarten teacher and mystery writer, didn’t seem to go together. I don’t think it’s odd at all; it seems perfectly natural to me. That’s when I began to get a sneaking suspicion -could I be a little strange? May I am (shudder) a procrastinating, puzzling, perplexing, paradoxical person. Oh, my goodness! But then, it is a great comfort to think that most people are not all one way or the other. Some of us are really enigmas, and, it could be that you are one too – an enigma, I mean.
That’s certainly food for thought and I”ll consider my state as a living contradiction while I get busy painting that storage building! Maybe somewhere in all that, there lurks the plot of a cozy mystery!
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