EXERCISES IN FUTILITY - APPARENTLY MY FAVORITE KIND ! THE TITLE IS THE SAME, THE CONTENT IS DIFFERENT.

It's another beautiful morning. That's how it is in the tropics. The day will likely bring rain in the afternoon.  Some days, thought it doesn't rain. And that sets up the expectation [hope?] that it won't rain today.

And, that brings us to the widely accepted version of "crazy".  You can all say it together. 

DOING THE SAME THING OVER AND OVER AND EXPECTING A DIFFERENT RESULT. 

Personally, I would not call that crazy. Not in the clinical sense, since crazy isn't in the diagnostic manual.


It is, however, really, really dumb. So, that would make me, really, really dumb.

The trouble with this problem, is that we, while we are being dumb, are also being blind. It is actually a very easy state to ahieve.

What may look to someone outside the situation as doing the same thing, to me, it looks like something else entirely.

It took me scrubbing the lanai pavers yesterday for me to understand this.
As usual, I went out back with the intention of putting a decorative solar bird outside the cage that is supposed to keep out the bugs and dirt.

Since our pool is not an inside the house pool, the dirt from the garden and preserve blow in. And we also have pavers that we put in when we bought the house.

The couple who lived here before us had two huge Golden Retrievers and the pool was for the dogs.  Instead of having the normal pool decking, they had an "L" shaped grass run inside the lanai. It may have looked pretty, but after trying to keep the grass cut and having most of it in the pool, we decided to change it.

the pavers are around the "back side and let side.

Not having much money, and not knowing any better, we had pavers put in instead.  We did leave one little tiny crescent shaped space for our dog. A tiny Maltese and it worked out fine.

The problem is that we get lots of weeds between the pavers. I know. What has this got to do with anything?  I'm sorry, but I do not know how to tell a story without all the details.

Weeds grow in dirt. The dirt between the pavers. The dirt that makes our lanai look like we don't take care of it. Well, truth is we don't keep on top of it. There's a difference.

I scrubbed that yesterday. There are already two weeds. DUH

So, yesterday, I went out and the gardeners who had cut the bushes around the side of the cage had broken my little wooden water can. I picked it up and "thought "wow", these picks sticking out would be really good to scrape out the dirt and then it should stay cleaner."   This is where a friend would have said, "now hold on there. Think this through. When you are done, will all the dirt be gone? Will it be better for longer than, ten minutes?"

Alas, I was alone. And so I scraped and I scraped and I was hunched over in the hot sun and I brought out the mini shop vac to suck up that dirt. I was afraid to go in the pool to cool off since I was working with an electric machine and the water that would drip would create mud which the vacuum wouldn't suck up.
See. I was thinking on all cylinders. I almost get heat stroke twice. The compulsive part of me won't let me stop. The smarter part, now lets me take breaks.

it hasn't moved itself. it's blurry. no glasses.

I made my way around the pool. I got dirt off those pavers. I was feeling pretty damned good. And hot. I was about to jump in the pool when I realized that the clumps of ants were still floating around.

SHIT!!  My husband was on a Kayak journey and before he left in the early morning, he said he wasn't going to scoop them out because when the pump comes on, they'll go into the filter. I kept my mouth shut. I hoped he was right, but I didn't think so. See. It's so easy to spot when someone else is doing it.

The martyr in me, had wanted my husband to come home while I was still scraping and fainting. That calls for timing. Ours is always good. He came home just as I was cursing him under my breath because I was scooping these fucking ants out of the pool and dumping them outside the door. And guess what. They were still alive!   They started to crawl back towards the open door. I had to get the hose and spray them away, and go back to scooping and of course in my zeal, I seem to have hit the scooper and the screen inside ripped. Now I was scooping up dead/live ants with a screen that ducks could fly through.

It was at this moment that my husband came home. He opened the back slider and said hi, I'm home. My impulse was to hit him with the scooper. Instead, I said something about his theory not working and he went inside.

Not being the heartless bitch I would like to be,  I went in to find him, He had called on the way home and told me how wonderful it had been. How nice of me to ruin it the minute he saw me. oh God. So, I don't think he heard me. I found him coming in from the garage and asked if we could start over and I welcomed him home again, hugging him and saying how happy I was he had a good time.

Okay. So, I have learned and don't always do the same stupid thing. YAY. I can learn.

Well, maybe.  Since I had the hose out I did what I had told myself I wouldn't. I washed some of the pavers. And low and behold. There was still dirt. Also, a thunderstorm had started, but at that point I didn't care if I got hit by lightening.

I sat under the covered part of the lanai and started to cry. I had accomplished nothing. I worked so hard, and for what? What had I really expected?

That was when I realized that "this" is my crazy. Yours is probably different. Mine is to want something. Possibly, something that can't be done the way I try to do it. (I'll explain that later).  And so, I work my ass off, or spend the money for whatever it is that I think will "fix" me, and the result is always the same.
I either end up where I began, or things are worse.

He had to say heartache because evil was already taken.

*the digression. I told my husband last month, or even before that, that I wanted to see if we could do something about the pavers. Either get them taken out and have the whole thing done like the rest of the pool area, or maybe put in sand and definitely, it needed repainting. He listened. I mentioned it once more. Saying it more than once is nagging. This time he asked his friend Bob about it. Bob is in the painting/construction business. He knows about all this stuff. They agreed that Bob would come over and have a look. If you were Jewish, you would understand that I know when Bob will come. He'll show up on Tish'a bov.  That is an obscure holiday that only the really Orthodox keep track of. Actually it's like arbor day which is nice. But, it's the equivalent of when will he come? When hell freezes over, or an equivalent of he will come, but I'm not sure in which lifetime.  That's why I took matters into my own hands.



BUT I DON'T LIKE THE RESULT!!



sometimes, it can't be done over.

 

 

Why was I so upset?  I did the same thing with my cataract surgery. I wanted to be able to see without glasses. Okay. Reading glasses. The doctor hemmed about it, and he should have said, you're asking for something that won't work. Go get another opinion. But he didn't. He said he'd do what he could. Took my 22 hundred bucks and I am waiting on my new prescription for another pair of progressive lenses which is what I started out with. The prescription may be different, but the results are the same.



THEORY ON WHY WE DON'T SEE WHAT WE DO:

so focused on the end, we don't see what is around us.

Each "thing" we do that is a repeat of what we've done before, looks different to the person who's doing it. If I saw it as the same thing, I wouldn't do it again. I'm not stupid. We just don't see the BIG PICTURE. Each event is seen as a separate occurrence or issue. Therefore, it looks different. People who are looking from the outside aren't fooled. However, we can't hear them. We see the little picture. This situation is red. The other was blue. This is round, that was square. They aren't the same. He is not anything like the last guy. She is nothing like my ex-wife.  Etcetera etcetera and so forth.



CONCLUSION:
Do you really want to stop doing the same thing over and over? Do you really want a new result?
You've heard it from me before and you'll probably hear it again. You have to want change in order to make change.

okay. I have choices.

Sometimes that means looking at the bigger picture. Asking yourself questions that you probably know the answers to, but don't want to admit. It also asks for you to look at your life in patterns. What patterns do you see? What themes keep playing out over and over? Do you like the outcomes? Do you want something different? If you do, you have to accept that you are doing something wrong. Not crazy, not dumb. It's just that you have made a mistake and not learned from it. The trouble is recognizing that many of the mistakes aren't different ones. They're like one giant error that you just haven't yet been able to see.


yeah. even me. maybe especially me.

 

 

So, open your eyes and take a GOOD LOOK INSIDE.  Don't worry about you see. It's likely everyone else already does. And, it really isn't all that great to be the last one to know.