Have you ever had a task that lingered on your to-do list so long that it started to resemble a scary container of leftovers from the back of the fridge?

It isn’t always logical which tasks are going to end up moldy. Some of them really don’t take long to do, yet they keep getting passed over and procrastinated on. There’s always something else that is more urgent or appealing.

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Atlanta has roughly a bazillion public and private pools. I’m a kid who grew up on the beach, so it was a whole different world that I did not encounter until I was an adult.

And one of the things I learned early on in my membership at Piedmont Park Aquatic Center is the existence and purpose of adult swim (not to be confused with the cable network by that name, also based in Atlanta).

You may believe, as I did, that adult swim is an opportunity for the grownups to enjoy the pool without all of those pesky kids getting in the way.

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I took up tennis a few summers ago because I didn’t know how to win.

Whenever I was up, whether in an actual game or in a real-life circumstance, I would slow down.

And whenever I was down, I would hang in there too long without taking decisive action, tell myself it was okay, or give up.

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The other day, one of my students (let's call her Maureen because no American kid is named that in 2022 and it's funny), was working on a math problem that was really more of a number puzzle.

Maureen turned to me and asked a question that I was utterly prepared for: "Am I really going to need to be able to do this in my life?”

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A leader I know is way too busy to do all of the stuff she's doing.

Still, she wants to continue to perform a certain administrative task that takes a few hours per week.

"That stuff is fun and easy for me," she said. "I enjoy it."

I understand that — I do that. Most of us do.

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