The only time I feel an acute sense of failure is when I forget to bring the recycling out to the curb. It’s not as easy as it used to be for an endless list of reasons – I live on the fourth floor now, I have no accountability to a roommate, sometimes my feet hurt after waking up, and so on. Most days, I'm not going anywhere in the morning so I don't even have the option of bringing it out ‘on the way’ to someplace else.
But still, in the grand scheme of things, it’s pretty easy, this 'bringing out the plastic and paper' chore. It isn’t as hard as running, which I do most days. It isn’t as hard as writing. No matter what kind of day it is, I almost always make it outside, so if I just timed my first trip outside properly, I should always be able to do this successfully twice a week.
And yet, on some recycling days, all the beer bottles and tofu containers and shredded spam mail I accumulate through the week remains tucked under my table. It sits there as the truck rumbles down the street, parks in front of my apartment, and picks up everyone else’s recycling. Mine, meanwhile, waits upstairs, patiently, in the Whole Foods bags I store all the recycling in. Until next time, I guess.
My failure really hits home on the days when I go outside early enough but forget to bring the recycling down. I look up and down the street and see everyone else’s crap, see that everyone else has done this simple thing correctly that I cannot, and I wonder why I sometimes fail to do this simple thing correctly.
I consider going upstairs, a two-minute round trip, to get the recycling and bring it back down. It’s an easy enough idea. I’ve done it plenty of times to retrieve things I’ve forgotten – headphones, detergent, a book. For those things, I wouldn't even stop to think. But even as I consider going up, I know I’m not going to go. I’m already defeated, for some reason, and fixing my error isn't as simple as going back upstairs.
