It can sometimes happen that you really can’t be bothered. Even if it’s to do something that you normally quite like to. This happened to Kimber on Sunday. We were at the bottom of Drummond Hill in Kenmore, and after I’d been walking for a few minutes I turned around to find that Kimber was still at the bottom, not budging. She looked at me as if to say, ‘Do we have to? Maybe we could just go home and chase a ball?’.
I had no intention of going home to throw a ball around. I love walking up that hill, although I have to confess there’ve been times when I’ve felt a bit reluctant to make the steep climb myself. I’m not sure why Kimber couldn’t be bothered. She’d been delighted to scamper up it on Friday, and hadn’t had a ‘proper’ walk on Saturday due to the rain that persisted all day. Perhaps she was tired after a late night and the clocks going forward. Or maybe she just gets spoiled with more ball chasing when we’re in Kenmore, and that meant she thought she should have even more of her favourite occupation. Or maybe there was no real reason, and she just didn’t feel like it.
Unfortunately for Kimber, I was in charge, and once I put my hand in my right-hand pocket, where the treats live, she soon joined me. There are three sections to the particular route we were taking, and for the first part of the walk, coaxing Kimber with treats seemed to be the only way we were going to get up that hill! Once we were a third of the way in to the walk she was more her normal self, and I think she’d finally got the message that the walk was happening so she may as well get on with it. By the final section, she was scampering around, running with sticks, sniffing here and there, and generally having a marvellous time. She’d clearly forgotten her earlier reluctance, and found that she could be bothered after all.
So what can I learn from Kimber, the next time I find that I can’t be bothered? Perhaps to find enough of a motivation to start, to keep going until I’ve committed to the thing, and then to find enough in the task to enjoy, so that I forget all about not being bothered in the first place. What do you do when you can’t be bothered?