Member-only story
Old Habits Die Hard
Or I was just blind to change
I’ve perfected the art of streamlining a lot of things and creating routines, mostly so I don’t have to waste any effort thinking about them. I thought I was being remarkably efficient, but moving after living in the same house for twenty-six years proved that I was blind to how I do some things.
For instance, I didn’t even think about the doorstop rock.
Years and years ago, my younger son brought home a rock that made a perfect doorstop. I put it at the base of the door in my writing room, and it worked really well whenever the wind blew through the room. So, of course, when I moved, I put the rock at the base of my new writing room door. That’s where it belonged, you see.
Never mind that I’d bought a high-pile rug for my writing room and that rug effectively jammed the door open.
Recently, while the windows were wide open, a windstorm arrived and blew the bedroom door shut and startled the everloving daylights out of me.
When my heart returned to a more normal pace, I pondered the problem; how do I keep this door open even if it’s windy?
It took me an embarrassing amount of time to figure out that I could actually move the doorstop rock to the bedroom door instead of my writing room door.
