Taking things apart, slowly, bit by bit.
I am a patient person. I was a patient child. I can sit for hours in limbo, waiting for a person or an event; I can work on stories for years; I can go on long trips by car or plane without stress.
I get impatient sometimes, but usually only when my patience has been called upon unexpectedly.
The other side of this coin is that I’m a completionist — I am driven by the desire to complete tasks as expediently as possible.
In my youth, I could patiently work on a task for however long it took to finish it. I tended to let things like house cleaning and the laundry go for a while, then attack it with single-minded concentration until it was done, even if that meant a full day or several days of effort.
This doing things in fits and starts, that did not groove with me at all.
Do, or do not. I was good either way but I did not like that place in the middle, of “doing but not doing”, where a simple project was done in sections over time.
Not that I can’t deal with being put in that position at all, since I am, as stated, patient. I just prefer not to handle things that way.
Well.
I preferred not to handle things that way. I’m older now, and I’m realizing that I simply have neither the stamina nor energy to do things ALL AT ONCE FOR HOWEVER LONG IT TAKES.
That was hit home to me today as I took apart the rat tower. It is a large double-decker cage that housed two rats who, alas, have passed on from this mortal coil. The tower is going to go away eventually, picked up by friends who will no doubt populate it with more adorable rats.
Which meant I had to disassemble it, clean the pieces, and pack it up.
It’s taken me all damn day.
When I was 20 or even 30 that would have been unimaginable. But I’m 48 and my back is wonky at best, sometimes painfully so, and going at this project like a steam train up a mountain would have quite literally hurt me.
I had to do it in pieces. Take a panel off, clean it, move it to dry; repeat. I could do two pieces at a time but after that I had to break off and rest. I started at 10am and just finished at 6pm, because of how many breaks I had to take.
IT WAS SO DAMNED ANNOYING.
But still, it’s dismantled and cleaned up. I might wait to pack it for tomorrow.
I’m patient.