More evidence that I am not yet the person I would like to be

I'm at home, after working, listening to the crunch of the dogs eating kibble and poking aimlessly at a few errandprojects I've got on my to-do list. I'm contemplating pasta, feeling guilty that I didn't exercise today, and looking forward to watching some episodes of Firefly on DVD that the Netflix fairy just brought.

Among the myriad other things that I am not doing is volunteering. A few weeks ago I told the Western Service Worker's Association that I would do some office work for them this evening. Luckily, they seem to have forgotten (they're not a very efficiently organized bunch), but I didn't forget. I'm playing hooky.

I don't like volunteering. I've done it, desultorily and guiltily, on and off all my life, like a good liberal child. But I don't like it. It's boring and involves interaction with a lot of strangers. I resent the chunks of my time, however small, that it takes away from my dogfeeding/tvwatching/pastaeating time.

I would like to like volunteering. I would like to like working, too, and exercising. They are all good things, good for me, opportunities to better myself and the world. They matter to me. But I feel about them as I feel about most obligations; in the immortal words of Ogden Nash:

O Duty!
Why hast thou not the visage of a sweetie or a cutie?
Why displayest thou the countenance of the kind of conscientious organizing spinster
That the minute you see her you are aginster?
Why glitter thy spectacles so ominously?
Why art thou clad so abominously?
Why art thou so different from Venus?
And why do thou and I have so few interests mutually in common between us?

So, here I am, in the armchair instead. Perhaps I'll make some pasta. Perhaps I'll call the Western Service Worker's Association and set up a time...for next week. Perhaps I won't.