How Long Do You Sit With The Broken Parts Of Your Life?

Six years ago when we moved into our house we found out that our oven was lame. After some very questionable meals we eventually solved the mystery, discovering that all we had to do was set it 100 degrees higher than the temperature we were actually going for. For the most part it worked out just fine and if we ever wanted a frozen pizza that required a higher heat setting, then we were just shit out of luck.

We always intended on getting a new oven but it’s weird how easily you can become accustomed to it all – to all of the little tweaks and dances that we do in our everyday lives to just make things work. Often times it actually takes another person to notice it, to point it out to us, and sometimes, to even help us fix it. 

My Dad bought us this toaster oven so that we could actually have something that worked properly – we use it all the time. And eventually when we did get a new oven, this baby still got all the action. Now, unfortunately, it’s on fritz as well. 

For the past – I want to say six months but I know it’s been at least a year – the start button only works sporadically. Sometimes you are lucky to only push it a few times and other days you are standing there huffing and puffing, cursing yourself sideways for having avoided the problem for so long, as you push the button for the god damn thirteenth time. 

To add to the pile, in the past month the bottom two burners just decided to throw in the towel and up and quit – changing what use to be just ‘making toast’ into a full-time, carefully calculated, work of flipping art. 

So is this post really just about a toaster oven?! Well kinda, that’s all I got these days – ha – but it’s meant to be a sort of weird analogy as well. 

I think there are a lot of different parts and aspects of our lives that probably don’t work quite as well as they should. Maybe they aren’t entirely broken, but they could be better, and as such our lives could be a little easier. Whether it’s our relationships, our jobs, our bodies, our mental health, or just our overall quality of life, these are all very important facets that will just continue to sit idle until we finally decide to do something about them. 

Sometimes we catch them in time, and the work is hard but doable, and other times we wake up to the fact that we’ve waited far too long. 

And it’s not always about having the means to fix it, with time, money or resources – which is definitely what we always tell ourselves – but more about our intentions or lack thereof, and our very strong default mode of just trying to make things work and learning to adapt, because in some way it helps, to make it feel less messy – but in reality it just gets worse. 

So what am I even saying? Go get your appliances fixed? No. I just think we all need to help each other and help ourselves see the things in your lives that we struggle with on a daily basis, for no other reason then to simply continue the struggle. Often times the things that seem so external to us or completely outside of our control are some of the same things that seem like a simple solution to someone else. 

It’s all about that first step towards resolution, that first reach towards something different, and that first moment when we realize we actually do have a choice and we do have the power to change a lot of it, if we want to. 

p.s. We’re getting a new toaster oven.

p.p.s. Cats can be pretty damn intuitive and are really good at helping us to figure our shit out, too – go get yourself some of those if you don’t have any already.