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Lately, I've been having trouble with the word "should." I can really get myself wrapped up into a snit about all the stuff I "should" be doing. For example, my house is so covered in dog hair that even the dogs are starting to look worried about the carpet. I really "should" vacuum.
I also "should" spend more time working, so my To Do list doesn't continue to look like the Great American Novel. Any time I'm out in my garden watering or (heaven forbid) just puttering around, I think about how I "should" be working on that Web site design for client x, y, or z.
But then what I really "should" be doing is getting several books ready for publication (and they are so very close) for my own company. Client work shouldn't rule my life. I "should" be getting our own shopping cart done and finishing up all those half-done products that go into it.
I also "should" put links to our recently completed client sites into the portfolio links on the Logical Expressions site. I "should" be doing a better job of updating our Web sites in general, since a few of them are really horribly out of date now. (However, the brand new summer issue of Computor Companion IS online at http://www.computorcompanion.com.)
As I went through my litany of shoulds (and yeah, there are a lot more), I realized that it's all too easy to make yourself completely miserable over that one word. "Should" can do a lot of damage.
I mean, who died and decided all these things that "should" happen? Who is that God of Cleanliness that decides how much hair is too much hair on the carpet? How much time is the right amount of time to be working? How much is too little? My husband often quotes Dick Haab, a performance coach he once worked with who proclaims that "we all should on ourselves too much."
He's right. If I'm always worrying about what "should" happen, I'm not thinking about what IS happening. And the reality is that when I'm not shoulding all over the place, life is pretty good, and I'm actually getting a lot accomplished.
So, for right now anyway, I'm just going to try and relax and enjoy life. After all, the dog hair will still be there tomorrow ;-)
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