Glenn Miller’s Frying Pan

Glenn Miller is “In the Mood,” just like I am whenever I hear Big Band music start up.  Wouldn’t it be great to be in the mood for everything all the time?  I’d never procrastinate because I’d always feel like doing whatever needed to get done.  Glenn Miller must have been the same way.  I bet his frying pan was always scoured and his bathtub was always sparkling.  Obviously he was always in the mood to woodshed his instruments (cornet, mandolin, and trombone) because you don’t get that good without a lot of practice.

The trouble is that there are a lot of aversive tasks that need to be done, but the mood to do them is never going to come because frankly, they suck.  I’m pretty sure nobody is ever in the mood to scrub a toilet.  If anyone ever feels like scouring an oven, I’m not one of them (although with a silicon oven liner, it may not be necessary anyway).  There has never been a morning when I woke up, leapt out of bed, and shouted, “TODAY is the day I’m going to remove the mildew from the grout in the shower!”  Come to think of it, there has never been a morning when I woke up and leapt out of bed, end of story.

I don’t feel like it right now.  I’m never going to feel like it, either, not in this lifetime and not in infinite reincarnations.  The very thought that I might one day go around “feeling like” doing a bunch of boring, icky things is a little depressing.  I don’t think I even want to find out what being in the mood for scutwork feels like.  If there is a pharmaceutical intervention that makes cutting the hair out of my vacuum sound like fun, I don’t want it.  I just want to get all those things done as quickly as possible.  Once I get it over with, I can focus on things I do feel like doing, possibly with a Big Band soundtrack in the background.

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