“In every job that must be done
There is an element of fun
You find the fun and snap!
The job’s a game…”

So begins the wonderful song, “A Spoonful of Sugar (Helps the Medicine Go Down).”

Why am I quoting Mary Poppins?

Well, life has been A LOT lately (hence the lack of me here in this space.) I read a quote (or a tweet?) recently that I can’t remember verbatim, but it was something along the lines of, “I wish someone told me that adulthood is mainly CHORES.”

SO TRUE.

I can barely keep up with my to-do list, and not least of all because I loathe mediocrity. I crave intellectual stimulation on a pretty regular basis. So much so that when I recently read a book about frontier life, I was intensely jealous of the characters in it, even though they were building their own house, eating pinecones, peeing in the woods, negotiating fraught peace treaties with the locals, dying of smallpox, etc.

That’s LIVING! I thought. Sure, life was hard, but at least they didn’t have to send boring emails all day.

But for better or for worse, I’ve chosen my life, with its day job, modern conveniences and all. (I couldn’t really live in the 18th century — how would I write? With a quill and ink? I do far too much editing-as-I-go for that.) And that comes with a certain amount of adulting.

So how to actually be an adult and get through it all?

By adding spoonfuls of sugar to all the stupid stuff I have to do. Such as:

• Hoard up episodes of favorite podcast. Only let yourself listen to them during a massive thank you note writing session
• Do the same, but with laundry
• And with cleaning the bathroom
• Hoard up episodes of your favorite show. Watch them while ironing/working out/cleaning out your sock drawer
• Allow yourself to buy a new sundress only AFTER you’ve done something annoying online, like disputed a bill with your dermatologist
• Don’t let yourself check Twitter until you’re in the middle of blow-drying your hair (yes, I consider this an annoying, necessary task, and postpone doing it as long as possible by not washing my hair for a week)
• Put on the Hamilton soundtrack when doing absolutely any soul-sucking task (I FINALLY saw it last week and Jesus Christ, the whole world wasn’t kidding. It is that good.)
• Put chocolate chips in your healthy trail mix

Any other ways you’re adding spoonfuls of sugar to your life? Let me know!

Photo by Janine Robinson on Unsplash