Simple Pleasures

Today, with NaNoWriMo out of the way, I knew I had to make a start on some holiday housecleaning. Housecleaning is not one of my favorite chores (although I suppose it does rank ahead of grocery shopping). However, as I moved furniture around and washed curtains and wiped down baseboards and mopped floors and dislodged dust that had been there for far too long, I have to admit to feeling a certain amount of satisfaction. There's a simple pleasure in doing a task that returns instant and visible progress. Writing, by contrast, can sometimes go on for weeks, months, without the same feeling of accomplishment. Even when the pages are piling up, there is still so much more to be done before a project can be pronounced "finished." So today I tried, instead of tackling the work as an unpleasant chore, to take pleasure in the job and in what I was accomplishing. I thought of it as something I was doing to make our lives more pleasant for the coming holidays. It worked. I feel like it was a job well done. And a clean room just smells so nice.

Of course, that was only one room. I may feel differently in a few days' time. ;-)