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Worst things first.

There are four things I must do over and over that I frankly (and ultimately inexplicably) hate doing.

1. Laundry. While I appreciate clean clothes as much as the average young adult, I am a far bigger fan of wearing one pair of jeans a lot of times. My disdain for doing laundry is not limited to the washing and the drying. Nay, friends — it is also the folding and the hanging and perhaps worst of all, the ironing (which is why I mostly only buy clothes if they seem like they’ll look the same after I crumple them). The first step leads to the rest of the steps, and I find all the steps tedious and boring. Which is why I can go two years without logging into Facebook but can’t go a week without running out of pants.

2. Filling my car’s gas tank. Fact: I have owned a car for nine years and I have never looked at a gas price (except for the time I accidentally pressed premium instead of regular and didn’t realize it quickly. You are not welcome, Mobil.). This is because I am irresponsible how much I am paying is irrelevant if “conveniently on my way to someplace else” is the answer to the following question: When and where am I getting gas? Because under any other circumstance, getting gas is worse than doing laundry.

3. Going to the bank. Let me preface this by saying I have never had a bad experience at the bank. I’m always easily in, always easily out. Which is why the dread that overcomes me when I realize a reason exists for me to drive there cannot be explained. I just don’t want to do it. Ever.

4. Unpacking. Because it always leads to [Please refer to point number 1 above.].

The point is this:

Regardless of the ease with which I could do it, I hate doing laundry and getting gas and going to the bank and unpacking. Which is precisely why, when one of those things is on my to-do list, it is always, as in, without exception, the thing I should do first.

When I decide to wait on any of the four aforementioned nuisances, I wind up realizing at, say, 1:14 a.m. on a school night, that I have no clean clothes, or I pull a Kramer in the car, or I owe a colleague a dollar for a year (I don’t own a debit card.) or I treat a very full suitcase like an ottoman.

Doing the worst things first challenges us. It feels unnatural to do what we don’t want to do. But many-a-time, I have learned the hard way that the following quote is so true:


“If you want to make an easy job seem mighty hard, just keep putting off doing it.” -Olin Miller

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The home stretch.

Six class sessions, three weeks, three exams (two take-home and one in-class), three discussion board posts (one opinion and two responses to others’ opinions) and one extra credit assignment…

until summer.
1. Say it with me: Do. Not. Quit.
and
2. Patron saint of grad school, pray for us.
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The mile run.

I am not a runner.

So it was weird when before 5 on a summer morning, I put on a pair of running shoes. For a month, I had been working out from 5:30 to 6:30 weekday mornings with a trainer named Frank and the others who had signed up for his boot camp.

We met in a parking lot, empty except for our own cars, outside the clubhouse in a local subdivision. We stretched. We squatted, curled and pressed. That morning, the last day of camp, we each would run a timed mile to compare to the one we ran the first week of camp.

We stood side by side in a line, under the black sky. Frank fiddled with the stopwatch. He said go. We ran. He had already measured it: If we ran from where we stood in line to a gated neighborhood north of us and back, we would run a mile.

On the street, I ran, jogged, walked. Ran, jogged, walked. Over and over, slower than most but faster than some, in the Florida heat and through the thick humidity. I got to the gate. My lungs hurt. I turned around, and I ran, jogged, walked. Ran, jogged, walked.

By the time I could see the parking lot again, the black sky had turned to royal blue. The sun had started to rise. I jogged. My lungs pushed air out and took it in, hard. I turned into the lot. I could see Frank. So I sprinted. My feet and my lungs pounded with rhythm.

Pound, pound, in.

Pound, pound, out.

Faster.

Pound, pound, in.

Pound, pound, out.

Faster.

Toward our parked cars.

Faster.

Past our parked cars.

Faster.

“DONE!”

I collapsed onto the pavement, on purpose. My chest rose high and fell deep, air in and out (but not enough). Frank read my results:

11 minutes.

I began to cry.

“Are you ok?”

I nodded yes. And in tears, I did the math.

I had finished the mile run four minutes faster than my first one.

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This post is part of a series called “True Story.” Click here to read other posts in the series.

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The black sheet.

On a quiet Thursday night a few springs ago, I curled up on the couch in the family room, under a sheet, in front of the TV. After my show ended, I shut it off and shut my eyes. I fell asleep.

Before 5 a.m. on Friday, my brother — who then still lived at home with us — woke up to get ready for work. He rolled out of bed and wandered toward the family room. As was his occasional custom, he intended to spend the first few minutes of his day sleeping some more, but on the couch.

Meanwhile, I still lay sleeping.

All of my body except for my head was buried beneath a black sheet.

On a dark brown couch.

In total darkness.

Too tired to grab his glasses, my brother squinted to see, so he wouldn’t walk into furniture. At the couch, he leaned over it to look for a throw pillow. With his uncorrected eyesight, he saw what he assumed to be one of the peach ones.

But what he actually saw was a really blurry version of my face, which was sound asleep.

Until he grabbed it.

If it is scary to have your face grabbed in your sleep, it is scarier to have your pillow turn out to be a face. We both screamed. Then, I laughed, almost non-stop, for exactly 30 minutes, no exaggeration.

True story.

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This post is part of a series called “True Story.” Click here to read other posts in the series.