The First Step
I did something good today. Something hard.
One of the toughest things I have found in life to do is to take the first step toward anything. The first step is the most painful, and the reason people generally avoid taking them. It is change. Leaving the comfort of what is and stepping toward unfamiliar ground.
I cleaned my bathroom.
Yeah, laugh. Go on.
Now let me explain.
I used to live in a damn near immaculate apartment. I have for quite a while. My mother was always shocked considering the number of years I refused to clean my room. But the first time I moved out on my own, it was a, pun intended, clean slate. I started off putting things away, vacuuming regularly, and so on. And I had a roommate that was also fairly clean. My roommate’s cleanliness, however, turned out to be tied directly to his mood. When we moved to the next apartment, he changed jobs and stopped seeing the girl that he was, and he stopped cleaning. Happy.. clean. Unhappy.. not clean. But it was okay as there was me and our third who kept this tidy. Then I moved back home. My parents had a new house that I had never lived in. I had one room, and I felt like a guest. So I moved out again with a friend who bought a house. It was clean, but he preferred to have a “cleaning day” once a month instead of cleaning along the way. It was his house, so I went along with it. Then decided to get my own place. Ahhh… Freedom. 🙂 This place I cleaned, kept my own schedule, and it was good. Of course, time came that I decided I needed more money, so I moved and took on two roommates. We are slobs now. Well, not totally. We clean enough so that its not filth, but there are stack of books, boxed sitting around, and more.
But today I took the first step, and cleaned the bathroom.
See, the trick I have found is that often it looks more daunting than it is because you look at “cleaning the apartment”, when its actually more managable if you look at “cleaing the bathroom”, “cleaning the living room”, “cleaning the bedroom”, and so on. Making the large task smaller, and less painful steps to take.
Baby steps.