When you’re engaged in a time-consuming, repetitive task, your mind is free to wander. That’s one of the things I loved about carpet cleaning. My imagination could run wild while I was guiding the machine around the floor. I came up with so many great ideas while I was cleaning. Unfortunately, I was too drained and in too much pain by the time I got home to do anything with them.

For the past two days, while I have been smashing concrete with a hammer, my mind has been circling around one thought in particular: What the fuck am I doing? Is smashing all of this concrete with a hammer really the best use of my time? Probably not, but I’m like a freight train. It takes me a long time to get going, but once I’m moving get out of the way, there’s no stopping me.

This Is Nothing New

I once spent two days picking pea gravel out of a planter in my front yard, which we removed when we landscaped the yard. I didn’t want it to go to waste, so I picked every last pebble out of the dirt and filled buckets with them. It sure would be nice to have those buckets of gravel right about now. I don’t know where they went.

Logic would dictate that spending my time smashing concrete with a hammer is foolish. I should just buy road base from a store and have it delivered. I just can’t do it, though. All of this concrete is of no use in its current state, but I can put it to use. Plus, if I don’t use the concrete, then I’ll have to dispose of it. Smashing it into little bite-size pieces gets rid of it in its useless form and puts it to good use. That’s how my mind works, for better or worse.