hopeless

Admit it. Some things are simply hopeless.

Take, for example, house cleaning. Hopeless! We have overnight guests coming this weekend, and I want them to know that I really did try to get the place in shape for their visit. I dusted, vacuumed, and mopped. The place looked fabulous...for about two minutes! That's when you-know-who came barreling in from a romp in the woods.

One good shake and my shiny, clean hardwood floor was blanketed in dead leaves, loose fur, and muddy paw prints. This is hopeless!

Then, speaking of hopeless, you have biostatistics. Yesterday I was catching up on some continuing medical education credits and the test included six questions on medical statistics, something I never understood, never use, and never will.

Nevertheless, determined to get it right this time, I accessed the reference that was provided and dug in. After about five minutes on true and false positives, true and false negatives, "specificity", "sensitivity", "confidence intervals", and calculating the "number of patients needed to treat inorder to improve the outcome for one patient in a thirteen year period" my brain turned to marshmallow fluff. It was hopeless.

Earlier in the week, I experienced a hopeless moment while writing, too. I was having such trouble with one scene, in desperation I asked my facebook friends how long it could possibly take to write one measly chapter.

    
The consesus was ten years! Some days it seems just that hopeless.

Still, knowing that your friends sometimes experience the same difficulty you do can be comforting. I started the scene over, and VOILA! I turned out not one, but two chapters in two days this week.

When things seem hopeless, it may just be that you're hoping for the wrong thing!

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"Expect your every need to be met,

expect the answer to every problem,

expect abundance on every level..."

--Eileen Caddy--

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Ps: I still haven't figured out the stats. Maybe next week, I'll write about hoping for things that are USELESS.

jan