Oh, the education I’ve gotten in the last two months. Welcome, finally, to Seriously Quirky. I’ve changed the layout, organization, color scheme, fonts and name for this blog repeatedly for two months. This is it. I’m done. Finished. Kaput. Wink. I hope I am.

I have ruined more dinners, more paintings, more essays, more explanations, by adding and subtracting and altering and changing – I’m doing it now. Pick a word and go with it.

My husband and I recently agreed that I just can’t make spaghetti sauce. I keep adding until it’s just too odd to eat. Too spicy. Too plain. Too sweet. Too salty. And there’s just so much of it when I’m finished.

Back in 2013 Phil Hartman played “the Anal Retentive Chef” on Saturday Night Live. In it he never got beyond cleaning the cutting board or throwing away unwanted scraps. I laughed too hard. I got it.

Call it OCD. Call it perfectionism. Whatever it is I have it.

Then again, sometimes I think we all suffer from too many choices. I’ve been told most of my life that it’s just wonderful that we as Americans can choose who and what we want to be – and it is wonderful. It really is.

But can I be the only one who noticed some strange happiness creep over in, mixed up with the bad, when the Coronavirus quarantine started? We were inundated with bad news and there was nothing to do except read it, watch it, Zoom about it, text about it. No more errands, no more appointments, no more going to the gym, work, school. In town traffic was cut by more than half. Everything on hold, so oh well, no need to worry about that.

Before the monotony of everyday being the same set it, I enjoyed my simple life. I could either shower or not shower. Eat or not eat. Sit in the den or sit in the bonus room. Those were pretty much my choices.

I loved it. I didn’t realize it at first, but I felt this weight lift. Life became so simple. I found myself thinking about how nice it might have been to live in a simpler time. Sure, it would’ve been hard, but would I have known it?

We had too many choices before we had smart phones and social media and an App Store. Now I sometimes loose track of time responding to my notifications, texts, alerts, sounds, badges.

Logically I know there’s not just one correct way to write, cook, paint, speak, communicate but in the moment I can’t stop fixing, perfecting.

Or can I?

“A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week.”

General George S. Patton

Love him or hate him, it is undeniable that General Patton got a lot done – perhaps not all of it good, but he was certainly on the move. And so I thought of his famous quote and decided to take it to heart.

This blog won’t be perfect, just like life. If I keep my sense of humor, I think I can live with it. There are so many choices too. Add an image or not. Change the colors and fonts. Sidebars, widgets, links, buttons.

This blog will be serious. This blog will be quirky. But mostly it will be. And not just in my head.

So here it is, a good blog violently executed.