Hey friend,
I took 5 cold showers this last week.
Five ice cold, chilling-to-the-bone, miserable showers.
Not as a brag, not as some sort of challenge or effort to make my skin healthier or embrace my inner hustle culture.
No, I took 5 cold showers because I'm bad at maintenance.
Last week, I noticed some standing water in the corner our garage. It was coming from the water heater. I looked around and it didn't seem too bad, the garage wasn't flooded or anything, but it was a concern for sure.
The next day, the water had reached a little further and started to seep into those boxes we'd packed up in a previous move and had sat in the garage ever since.
Not good.
The source was our water heater, a slow-but-steady drip was coming from underneath. We had someone come out to take a look and it turns out that there are a few steps I should have been taking for the last 7 years... like flushing the tank at least once a year, checking the anode rod, etc.
Without that regular maintenance, when a water heater dies, it's done. Too late for repairs or anything to try and salvage it.
So after a couple (6) trips to the hardware store, we eventually got a new heater installed. (I say "we" but really my dad did everything while I mostly watched and handed him tools)
Unfortunately, after we finally got everything installed, we discovered that the BRAND NEW water heater had a manufacturer's defect... and I had to make some phone calls (aka my personal hell) to schedule someone to come out and take a look.
The back-and-forth took several days (and bickering about money, another of my favorite activities) and we finally got the heater fixed after just under a week.
Bad at Maintenance
I've never been good at maintenance. Homes, health, relationships, etc. I'm really good at the start—energized and armed with the best intentions. Learning everything I can and taking action.
But over time, I lose focus (or more accurately, my focus shifts onto something new and fun and shiny). Efforts of maintenance are never super satisfying so they quickly fall to the bottom of my imaginary todo list.
Spoiler alert: I never get to the bottom of that list.
Now that I know about the maintenance required for the water heater, I'm trying to take some action, something that will help me take the action I won't remember to take on my own when my focus shifts and the enigma of time keeps on... enigma-ing.
Setting reminders
I use an app called Due which is excellent at nagging you and nagging you until you mark something as done. You can just keep snoozing it, which sounds like it would be a problem but is perfect for me. It allows me to stick to a hard rule that I never EVER mark something as completed in Due unless it's fully done.
Maybe I snooze something 20 times, but since I never ever mark it as done until it's done, it never completely falls out of my brain like things tend to do sometimes.
I've added recurring reminders to flush the tank and check the anode rod, now that I know those are important.
Taking notes (because I won't magically remember)
Sometimes a reminder pops up that is intimidating because it feels like it's going to be a bunch of work. I once avoided filing my business's annual report because I was scared it was going to be bunch of work. Turns out, it was super fast and easy!
I've since updated the reminder to now say "File WA LLC Annual Report (it's easy!!)" so when it popped up earlier this month, I was reminded that it's an easy process and I just immediately took care of it instead of avoiding and dreading it for weeks and weeks. I'll likely do the same with the water heater tasks once I've done them.
These things will definitely help, but I also know that maintenance is just always going to be a struggle for me.
I take steps to help mitigate it and plan for it, but I also just need to be a bit forgiving of myself. I know that when I forget to take care of something like this, it might mean I have to deal with some frustrating (and often expensive) consequences. But I don't need to add "feeling bad about myself as a person" on top of it. That's not going to help me or anyone else.
The goal is to do what I can to plan for the future, and hope that a few reminders might help save me from more cold showers in the future.
Those cold showers were soooooo miserable, it felt like the water was coming straight off of a glacier.
But that hot shower I finally got to take when everything was finally done? Heaven.
Elsewhere
🎙️ Attention Different Podcast
I was a guest on the Attention Different podcast and the episode just came out! We talk about motivation, shame, and how the ADHD label can be liberating, not limiting.
You can watch on Youtube, or listen to the audio version on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
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