Maintenance Free

I thought of a potentially interesting topic to write just a short blog post about while I had a bit of down time this afternoon. Obviously, I don't do that enough, so I had to take advantage of it.

First, though, I had to run some updates to the software on my web site. Had to download and install a whole bunch of fixes for the software this site runs on. The site didn't seem all that broken to me, but the folks who do these things said there were security holes and that they had created better software for me. It was slightly more than a thousand files that needed to be pulled down to my computer from a mystery computer somewhere in the world of electrons, then uploaded to my web site, followed by a series of functions to run that would fix up all the databases and such. Then I would have to check a bunch of other pieces of software that needed to be updated on top of the basic stuff.

Before I could do that, though, I had to update and fix the software that I use to update and fix the other software.

While I waited, I read a blog post from another writer I follow whose web site was down and required a team of technicians to fix. He, for better or worse and quite unlike me, makes part of his living from his web site, so it was a little more crucial to him than it was to me.

So here I am, all updated and current and ready to go until the next set of updates get posted in a week or two. Or maybe an hour or two. Maybe even a minute or two. But until then, I can get on to the topic I originally set about to write a very quick blog post about.

Which is the fact that so much of life seems to be oriented toward just fixing and maintaining things.

How much of what we do in a day is geared not toward creating new stuff, moving forward, learning, growing, and developing, but just toward keeping things running? It kind of boggles the mind if you stop to think about it. Did you brush your teeth this morning? (That's right, I have a dental appointment tomorrow to clean my teeth.) Do any laundry? Get your oil changed (oh, gosh, I just realized I have to do that - soon!)? Did you shovel any snow, or scrape any ice off your windshield? How about load or unload the dishwasher? Around here there was no grass to mow or weeds to pull from the garden, but that will come in due time.

What if one of the realities of heaven is that life will be utterly maintenance free? Try to wrap your mind around that for a while.