{how to catch it}

Motivation is a slippery and elusive creature. How do you catch it? How do you hold onto it? And what do you do when it goes away?

I don't know about you, but I walk around the house looking for it. It's never in the fridge, but I usually check there first. Food is sometimes an acceptable substitute for Motivation.

So then I'm walking around the house with a yogurt or a tupperware of leftovers or whatever and I peek into the office, and the bedroom, and the bathroom. I ponder the walls. I need to hang some pictures on the walls. The walls are bare. I feel like if I had some pretty pictures on the walls, I would find some Motivation there. But I have no Motivation to put pictures on the walls. This is cyclical, and straight-up depressing.

I check the fridge again. I sit on the couch. Motivation is never on the couch, even more than it is never in the fridge. If I would not sit on the couch with whatever I found in the fridge, I could maybe find some Motivation. But I have no Motivation to get off of the couch.

I am stuck on the couch.

I look at my feet. I look at my knees. Growing up, I had very knobby knees. There is nothing motivational about knobby knees.

But that was where I found myself yesterday morning. On the couch with my knees and my food and a complete lack of any Motivation whatsoever. Laundry to be done, dishes to be washed, even pictures to hang. Stuck on the couch.

Then I remembered, faintly, that sometimes before I've found Motivation outside. Like it's a two-year-old trying to run away and I've just got to go catch it. But I also knew that I couldn't get off of the couch without a good reason. So, with my last little shred of willpower and determination, like a drowning person stretching their weary arm just above the water in the hope that someone will see it and grab it, I texted Kiersten and asked if she'd go for a walk with me. When she said yes, I was then obligated to get myself off of the couch and into some shoes. (I don't think Obligation and Motivation are the same thing, but I think they're related somehow. Obligation is maybe Motivation's rich, snobby great-aunt. She makes you do things by yelling at you and waving her cane around and reminding you about manners and not inviting people places and then not showing up.)

So it was that I made it off of the couch and into some shoes and into the car and to the lake. And Kiersten, true to her word, was there, her son in his stroller. My metaphorical lifeguard. We set off.

And thankfully, just around the first corner, there was Motivation. Sitting on the dock kicking water at the geese. We walked for an hour, and I was happy to find that I wanted to, and it was such a relief to want to do something. And when I got home, I wanted to clean up the place and put supper in the crock pot and do my work.

Anyway, to make a long story longer, I am very thankful for good friends and fresh air and geese and the lake. I'm still not sure how to hold onto Motivation, but at least I know what I need to do next time I lose it.