Low Maintenance: Good, Bad, Who Cares?

A friend recently noted that I was ‘low maintenance’, and I took that as a compliment.

Then I began to wonder; what exactly does low maintenance mean?

Am I boring? Am I not forceful? Am I muffled? I could be gentle.

Does low mean I’m miserable?  That I have diminished needs? Or I don’t require many repairs?

When I looked up the definition of the words ‘low’ and ‘maintenance’ those meanings confused me further. For instance, Low can mean little, soft, sad, depleted, and trough.

And Maintenance can mean upkeep, preservation, alimony, repairs, grants, protection, and the list goes on.

If I’m low maintenance, I could cost little alimony, or need small amounts of protection. Maybe I require minimal upkeep, or am short of money.

I decided to see how low maintenance compares with high maintenance, which led to even more questions. High can mean, among other things, tall, great, shrill, sharp, abnormal, height, extreme, and on and on.

Just using a few of those definitions, high maintenance then could translate to extreme upkeep, or abnormal safeguarding, or tall repairs (as in roof replacing?).

You get the picture.

Since my friend’s tone in her email sounded sincere and loving, I’m going to take it she meant I am easy to be around requiring little attention.

So, I must ask myself: do I really want to be low maintenance? Sometimes that conjures up the image of a wallflower, overlooked and undervalued.

Do you see the pitfalls of being in isolation? Way too much time to question things that make no difference and lead to inane self conversations