Maintenance versus Repair

I am bad about maintaining things...my teeth, my body, my car, my house... I know it is cheaper to maintain something that to let it run down and then have to do a big fix, but constantly in my life I wait until it is bad, really bad...unavoidable and then have to pay the big money or investment of something to get it fixed.

I wish I had just maintained my physical health rather than having to fix it.  I would love to trade in and get a new model that is in reasonable shape and I PROMISE I would maintain it.  Wouldn't that be awesome?  If tomorrow I just started running a 8min mile and all I had to do was just keep it up...I would be ecstatic.

So if I follow that logic through...why when I start getting better do I stop and go back to letting it all go?  How quickly I forget the PAIN to get back in to shape and just figure magic fairy dust will keep my muscles and ignore the obvious signs of flab forming.

I read this IAMA on Reddit about a horder and it is really fascinating to me because the frozen feeling she reports is often how I feel about doing things and although I am the opposite of a horder (I overthrow away - seriously I often recycle documents and get rid of things it turns out I need) I know that feeling that comes over me that is just paralyzing and puts me in a state of complete inaction.

My son and I were talking today about a strange stream of consciousness at lunch today. ...about our sense of time and if it is underdeveloped in humans, to the impact of connected on the internet but disconnected from people, to the reason that people go insane in solitary confinement, to the loss and impact of that loss of creativity... to my typical rant and rave about society having too much fluff and feeling completely unsatisfied which explains our weight, our eating and drinking habits and our debt.

We are all stuck somewhere...it is hard to get unstuck...and once unstuck ...it seems like it is hard to stay unstuck.  Maintenance may be easier conceptually but some how it takes the need of repair to drive me to do anything.