Saying it’s hard is ultimately a justification to do whatever seems like the easiest thing to do

    You'd think that by now National Poetry Month wouldn't come as a surprise anymore. I should be prepared for what it takes to post a different poem (that I've never posted before) every day for 30 days. But it does always seem to throw me for a loop, and to make the regular posts nearly impossible to handle. I appreciate the patience of those non-poetry fans who stick around just in case I'll come up with something original, and also the poetry fans (I know you're out there) who sift through what you may not love for the ones that speak to you.
     This has been an interesting couple of weeks. I gave my notice to vacate my apartment at the end of my lease, May 31. I don't have any idea where I will live at that point. I've started packing, with a goal of filling 4 boxes per day until I'm living out of boxes. I've discovered that I need to find a foster home for some of my plants during the moving process; there is no way that I'll be able to move all of them in any reasonable fashion without breaking them to bits or taking an unrealistic amount of time to baby them. I've also given away a lot of stuff over the past month or so--little things from around the house that have accumulated over the years that, while I've enjoyed, I no longer need. Candle holders, picture frames, decorative bowls--that sort of thing. There are never enough flat surfaces in my dwellings anyway, and what I have is generally filled with books and plants. I've taken those things to find new, happy existence elsewhere. I plunk them on the lunch table at work with a note that reads "Want? Take!" Although there's been a bit of sheepishness in accepting "free stuff", my friends and colleagues have been willing to take nearly everything off my hands. (The only outlier being a truly ugly bank that was a gift, several years ago, from a friend who...never got my taste, let's say. That's heading toward Goodwill.)
     There are a variety of other reasons to have found the recent time upsetting, most of which either cannot be discussed publicly (even here) or are not my stories to tell. Suffice it to say, I'm trying to keep it all in perspective, and though I think I'm doing a pretty good job, it still manages to get the best of me now and then. While searching for a particular poem tonight, I found this quote (from a book that I really liked). It was an excellent thing to read just now.

Don’t do what you know on a gut level to be the wrong thing to do. Don’t stay when you know you should go or go when you know you should stay. Don’t fight when you should hold steady or hold steady when you should fight. Don’t focus on the short-term fun instead of the long-term fallout. Don’t surrender all your joy for an idea you used to have about yourself that isn’t true anymore. Don’t seek joy at all costs. I know it’s hard to know what to do when you have a conflicting set of emotions and desires, but it’s not as hard as we pretend it is. Saying it’s hard is ultimately a justification to do whatever seems like the easiest thing to do—have the affair, stay in the horrible job, end a friendship over a slight, keep loving someone who treats you terribly. I don’t think there’s a single dumbass thing I’ve done in my adult life that I didn’t know was a dumbass thing to do while I was doing it. Even when I justified it to myself—as I did every damn time—the truest part of me knew I was doing the wrong thing. Always. As the years pass, I’m learning how to better trust my gut and not do the wrong thing, but every so often I get a harsh reminder that I’ve still got work to do.

[Cheryl Strayed, in Tiny Beautiful Things]