the tremendous gertrude in me, it's remarkable

on the side of my right earlobe, there is a slit the size of a centimeter. slit or extra flap of skin, who knows. either way, it looks utterly gross. every now and then I spend five or so minutes of my time digging my nail into the tiny pocket of skin, hoping for gold. usually, I'll be rewarded with a bit of gunk but lately - I've been gunk-poor. 

my first thought for fixing this problem was to not clean my ear. it worked for a couple days until I started going to the pool 6 blocks down from my street every morning at 11am. I've discovered that floating on my back for 20 minutes, as the first activity of the day, does awesome tickles to the mind.

float for 20. silly swim around for 30. tremendous.

so, of course, submerging yourself in water every day will squeaky clean your ears for you. I'll never be able to build up gunk at this rate. my next thought was to remove the factor of the pool water. I searched online and of course, someone had designed mini shower caps for your ear. and even better - waterproof "stickers" that you stick around your whole ear, preventing anything, gunk included, from getting in. tremendous. 

although the shiny shimmer of these products looked bedazzling and buy-worthy, the tiny voice of my ear-skin-pocket, named Gertrude, started to shout "the original satisfaction of digging out gunk from me will be forever gone if you search too hard for it. it just won't be the same no more". 

Gertrude was 100% correct. the indulgence in this little action that brings me such unexpected contentedness on its own will be lost if I become too greedy and forceful of its joy. 

upon listening to Gertrude, I did not purchase waterproof ear protection products and I did not stop floating in the pool every morning. Gertrude rewards me with her gunk every once in a blue moon now. it's even more unexpected than it ever was and the joy of it is even greater than it ever was.

may everyone find and listen to their own Gertrude wisdom. tremendous.