Now and Then

I am assuming my normal look.  My incredibly normal look.  My boringly normal look.  My look that is so normal, I would be passed over in a line up even if I did it.  The thing is, I can’t hold this look for long.  I can for now, but if I try for too long it may cause unnecessary stress.
The phrase “now and then” occurred to me.  As in “How often do you do this?”  “Oh, now and then.”  What I relate it to, I think I have written about before.  I’m sorta thinking of it like an apple.  Well, not like an apple but like an apple.  Apple can be eaten in many forms.  It may be just as a straight apple.  Or it could be Apple Strudel or Apple Pie or Apple Crumble (with ice cream thanks).  Whatever form it takes, the base is apple.  What I am writing about may have the same base, but is a variation.  Works for me anyway.
Now and then reminded me of how I do tasks.  It may be that I need to do some gardening.  What I do is try to grab every tool I think I will need.  Rakes (steel and plastic), containers for weeds and mulch, hat, safety googles, gloves, and anything I cannot think of right now.
I then set about doing the task.  Normally I have given myself a timeframe.  I think “this will take one hour.”  Invariably a task takes longer than I have set, but I am ok the timeframe is more a guide than a fixture.
Once the task is completed, I put everything back where I got it.  For me, something is not completed until everything is returned to its position.  I like to make something look like I have never been there (except that hopefully it looks better).
I have seen others who only have a mind for the task at hand.  Whatever the task was looks great, even if all around it looks like a bomb hit.  The way I do stuff is just the way I do stuff.
This is where the now and then comes in.  I like to do all I need to “now.”  It has to be done so I may as well do it “now.”  There are others that “then” is ok.  As long as what I was doing looks good, I will deal with other stuff “then.”  For me, this can mean stuff to do can proliferate.  I may have several tasks and what I did looks great.  It doesn’t matter that there are a number of things to be dealt with “then.”  In a worst case scenario “then” can be code for someone else.
What I try to avoid is having so many “thens” that they are a task in themselves, and need to be done before I can do what I really want to do “now”.
This doesn’t work for some tasks.  Ones that take more than minutes or hours but take days.  I have a few of them on the go at the moment.  You sorta would not know I did though.  I try to make everything available for use as it was intended.  Tables can still be used by anyone as a table.  On mine is one task I have but in such a way that the table can still be used for anything else by anyone.
No wonder this normal look is so hard to hold.  The really scary thing is, all this makes sense to me.