When I originally set my goals for this and next month, it was my thinking that I can do just about anything for fifteen minutes. It’s not THAT long, but it’s long enough to get something accomplished, right? Wrong! When you set a timer and actually MAKE yourself do something for a predetermined amount of time, it’s incredibly long.

For instance, fifteen minutes of watching television; easy. Fifteen minutes of scrubbing the grout; hard. Fifteen minutes of talking with your honey without distractions of pets and television; pretty easy. Fifteen minutes of cleaning out the cat box or giving the dog a bath or dusting the electronics; hard. Now, most of these things are not hard in the traditional sense, like scrubbing grout, but they’re a special kind of hard. They are the hard that while you know it needs to be done, finding the motivation to do it is terribly hard to come by. Even things you WANT to do, like find your missing whatever, take a walk around the block on a sunny day, do yoga… when you add into the mix a lack of motivation (either because of being tired or just not really into that particular thing at that moment), I think that the task is doomed. This is where I’m at. Doomed.

I say doomed in a lighthearted, not “really” doomed, kind of way. But doing the task is unlikely to happen. I think that it’s this reason many resolutions fail shortly after the new year. People are tired, busy, stressed out and generally pulled in many directions… so much so that finding the drive to complete even necessary tasks, like doing the dishes, is potentially an overwhelming burden. I can only imagine what adding children to that stew would be like. I can see it from the “pet perspective” clear as day, however. So, my point is this… motivation is the key to getting anything done, even the stuff you want to do. Now, if I could find some of that stuff lying around, I’d be golden in getting to my goals this month.

Fifteen minutes is a long time….