Are You Easily Satisfied?

The family carved pumpkins the other night. TRC and DC were on their own for the most part. Denisa helped them get the guts out, and then they picked patterns to carve.

(I had suggested they just wing it and do faces, since I often end up getting stressed by silly things like pumpkin carving (It’ll be done faster if we just do faces, and then I can go back to my OUR LADY revision . . .)). They reminded me that the kid version of me would have been aghast at such a suggestion, and they stuck to patterns.)

So DC was working on a cat face, TRC was doing the grim reaper, and MC . . . MC was happily sticking monster parts into a small pumpkin. (Think of it like Mr. Potato Head, but with pumpkins.) She had more fun taking them out of the pumpkin than putting them into it, since the pumpkin had tough skin, and she had a hard time getting the parts to pierce it.

As I was watching all of this unfold (and helping both the older kids with their pumpkins, because if there’s any innate urge I have stronger than the one to get out of doing work, it’s the one to make sure work is being done well when I’m around. Seriously. What’s up with that? I need help.) Where was I in that sentence? Oh right. As I was watching all of this unfold, I was just impressed with the contrast of the kids. The older ones were really striving hard to do difficult things. The youngest was just having a blast doing the simplest of things.

I’m not saying we should all be happy just doing the easy things all the time, but I do think there are occasions when it’s the definite better option. Too often, I think I tend to default to a “if it’s harder to do, then it’s more worthwhile” mentality. To use a really basic example, I’ll spend a bunch of time putting movies into a Netflix queue, and then I’ll decide I don’t want to watch any of those, because it would be more interesting to find a new one.

Or maybe I’ll be working on a video project. Something that doesn’t really need to be perfect or anything. Just good enough. But instead I’ll dive in and make that video as good as I can possibly make it. There are advantages to both approaches, really. I like that I’m driven to do my best, and many times it’s brought me a lot of success.

But there needs to be an off button on that somewhere, or at least a pause button. I need to do a better job of looking at a situation and deciding just how much effort I really need to put into it. If I can have a fun time just sticking potato head parts into a pumpkin, why not run with that instead of coming up with something much more elaborate?

Anyway. Yet another introspective, thoughtful post. Don’t worry. I’ll try to review something really inane in the not too distant future. Happy Halloween!