Get Rid of the Couch

Someday has arrived.

We wait for something to change, as for a belated Amazon delivery.  Someday it will land on my doorstep, fully formed and gift-wrapped.  Someday I'll have the resources.  Someday I'll have the time.  Someday it will "just happen."  Someday I'll get around to it. 

But someday has two radically different meanings.  In all future tense, someday presents the biggest, most justifiable REASON in the world, all capital letters, one really legitimate excuse after another.  This someday owns the largest Laz-E-Boy recliner in the living room, equipped with a remote and two strategically-placed drink holders.  On the calendar, it is always tomorrow.

But in the present tense, someday is working toward something, one step at a time.  This someday double ties on its shoes every morning.  And ready, set, move another inch, another choice, and another day toward it.  What singular step can I take toward it today?  

Like wanting to run a marathon, but not yet even purchasing the shoes.

In the past few years, instead of filling notebooks with short stories, I have been talking about it, filling a notorious U-Haul trailer with one excuse after another.  All beginning with the word someday.  As if someday, something will change.

An opportunity arrived in my email in early June to join a short story workshop at the end of the month.  It caught my eye.  It pulled on my leg like a whining toddler.  It wouldn't let go.

Even with my desire to do it, the announcement was swallowed up by a tsunami of excuses. So many other things to do.  Do I really need that to write?  Not the right time.  The summer is busy.  It might not be any help at all.  I'm not very good at it anyway.

It was like being a contestant on the old game show Name That Tune, except with excuses.

But while I was pondering this, I overheard a conversation about why someone I know could not start rehabbing their house, but someday.  It was a litany repeated now for four years running, no end in sight.  If we do this, then we'd have to do that. Most of it hung on getting rid of a single piece of hand-me-down furniture that they did not particularly like.  They couldn't fix up the living room until they got rid of the huge, tired, sagging couch.  And if they changed things around in the living room, that would mean they had to start on the kitchen.  Moving the cabinets and taking down the useless half-wall would mean rearranging the appliances, re-doing the floor, re-plumbing the sink, patching up the backsplash, and painting the whole thing.  Way too overwhelming. Who has the energy for that?

One excuse always births a thousand more defenses.  But the truth is that just one little step loosens up the situation enough to get a handhold on it.  The entire dilemma is changed incrementally by even the smallest actions. 

Easy for me to tell them:  Get rid of the couch. It will get the ball rolling.

But I then realized my own huge proverbial couch of excuses blocking my progress.  I needed to tell myself the same thing.  What is keeping me stuck, crowding me out, and blocking my doing something? Doing anything? Someday is not just going to arrive on my doorstep.  If things are going to be different, something has to change. 

I signed up for the workshop.  I decided I would give this writing community a year.  I was very skeptical.  I still had excuses loudly clamoring on both sides of my desk like hungry dogs. But I attended the zoom meetings.  I did the homework.  I read the other members' stories.  I worked on my own.

And oddly enough, most of the work fit in the pockets of time of my day that I didn't know were there.

One morning just nine days later, I woke up encouraged.  Something changed.  And it was me.

It wasn't just about writing, because God never works in singular outcomes.  While one excuse births a thousand more defenses, one little step opens up a whole new layer of His strength and faithfulness we cannot yet foresee.

We can see our space with new vision. We can move toward someday, and not just think about it.

 

In all toil there is profit,

but mere talk tends only to poverty.

                  Proverbs 14.23