computer

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What Everyone Ought To Know About Maintenance

The word “maintenance” has a tag-along emotion for me . . . it’s called frustration.

I get frustrated with maintenance because I want to enjoy the thing that needs to be maintained; I don’t want to work on it.

Bike Maintenance

Bike Maintenance

I want to use something and not have to care for it or fix it. In the 80’s I didn’t want a PC because you needed to know DOS and a series of commands and what pressing the “Ctrl+Alt+Del” keys did. I just wanted to use a computer, not figure out how it worked.

I like to ride my bike; I don’t like cleaning it. I want to just pull the cord on my lawnmower and start cutting the grass. I don’t like having to scrape the grass off the undercarriage or keep it tuned.

The problem is, in the last week, my avoidance with maintenance has accentuated my frustration. I broke the chain on my bike, probably because I didn’t clean the gritty oil off it.

My lawnmower is having a hard time starting these days and it’s not cutting evenly because it needs a tune up and a wheel adjustment.

And my computer needs some file maintenance soon or I will run out of space on my hard drive.

This was all fresh in my mind when I watched a little 3 minute video on how to clean your bike after a ride so it’s ready for your next ride. The guy on the video said you could do it in five minutes, but somehow (through the magic of video, I guess) he showed us in three.

I’m almost convinced that I need a new attitude toward maintenance, but for that to happen I really need a new emotion to go with the word. I’ve been thinking of some emotions that I could associate with maintenance – emotions like affection, confidence and satisfaction … but I can’t seem to trick myself and instead I feel annoyance, contempt and suffering.

Some people love maintenance, maybe even more that using the item. But not me. I know my things would last longer if I had a warm, fuzzy attachment to the word but it’s just not that easy. I can’t turn a switch on and like it.

I thought of a couple of solutions. I could give away my stuff when it needs some maintenance, and just bless people with things that sort of work. But that would require me needing a lot of money to replace my items.

Also, I could farm the maintenance out to people who like doing it. But that too would be costly and I would be without my beloved whatever, while it was being serviced.

There doesn’t seem to be an easy solution for me that works. I might have to do maintenance even though I don’t like it, even though it frustrates me. I might have to just discipline myself in spite of the piggy-backed emotion that comes with the word.

Here’s the thing: Relationships, like with things we own, require maintenance. We might like the idea of just enjoying our relationship with God but to maintain that relationship, we need to connect with Him, grow in Him and serve Him. That kind of maintenance might seem like work that we might not want to put our energy into, but maintaining our relationship with God will require us to discipline ourselves in order to connect, grow and serve.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: How disciplined are you at maintaining your relationship with God?  Leave your comment below.

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I’ve Really Let Myself Go

Not very often, on rare occasions, every once in a while, I’ve seen a picture of someone and thought, “Man you’ve really let yourself go!” It’s like they just stopped caring about themselves and let age and gravity do their thing.

I feel like I’ve let myself go lately. It’s only been for the last couple of weeks so there isn’t much to notice. But the bothersome thing is, how easy its been to start letting myself go.

Paul's pic

There are a couple of things that have got me off my game lately: one is busyness and the other is sore body parts. Where I have let myself go is keeping up with my exercising and staying on top of my computer maintenance.

If you were thinking that I’ve gone all puffy, my hair was greasy and down to my shoulders and I hadn’t shaved in a week, you can dismiss that image from you mind (ha, maybe you can’t now).

My appearance hasn’t really changed. I’m still showering every day and shaving when I have to, but I’ve not been doing my daily walks, aerobics or weight lifting.  I know that it takes three weeks to make a habit, but I’m afraid that I’m forming a new habit in record time!

I guess, it’s natural.  When things are let go and unattended, they don’t get better. A lawn gets weeds, a car breaks down, food goes bad . . . when you let them go.

My computer has gone that way as well. My busyness has left me with 33 files and folders strewn all over my desktop, and emails mounting in my inbox. I’ve had too many other pressing things to keep up with.

It all started with a sore knee and elbow I somehow picked up from playing hockey. Nothing serious, but they were bothering me just enough that I thought I better rest them rather than push too hard.

After a few days of non-activity, I started to get pretty good at finding other reasons or excuses for not exercising … and that’s when I stumbled onto this busy thing.

The busy excuse has been working like a charm even after my knee started feeling better. I also found I could use it for a number of other things as well, like my computer.

Now here I am, two weeks into creating my new habit of letting myself go, and the things that were making me busy are completed. I don’t have an excuse now. I could say that I’m always busy but I know I’m not too busy to exercise and execute files and emails.

I’m thinking now that I have to stop creating a habit of letting myself go and start creating a habit of getting back to what I should be doing. But one habit seems so much easier than the other.

Even though I’m a little busy today – I have to travel out of town, and have a few things I need to do before I go – I’m going to get back to my exercises and clean up some files starting today.

Here’s the thing: Things come along to break up your routine of spending time with God.  Sometimes they are legitimate reasons, and they may be unavoidable. But it becomes easy to let them become excuses to keep you away from your time with God. Don’t keep using the same excuse or make up a new one. Decide today to get back to your time with God. He’s waiting for you.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What is your most used excuse to get out of things?  Leave your comment below.