Campfyre Stories

Let me start off by saying this is not an accurate title.  My life, at the moment, is not a mess, nor is my house at the point where it *needs* to be cleaned, but this is a mindset that I often find myself in.  It’s a Virgo thing. 

I was talking to Girl last night (or was it the night before?) and we were discussing that we, once again, find ourselves in a very similar point in our lives.  Most things are going well except for one minor(ish) point and one big gaping hole in the "What I need to be truly happy" list.  And, no, I’m not going to tell you what either of those, specifically are.  And for both of us, it’s the same thing in both instances.

But I came up with a plan some weeks ago.  I’m not going to actually obsess on this lack of whatever.  That just leads to Very Bad Things happening in my head.  Instead, I’m actively working to take care of ALL the little things that I keep putting off for whatever reason, and I intend to do it before the end of 2007 (which makes the countdown all the more important).

In my mind, this takes care of a couple of issues.  The first is that all those things will (finally) get done.  The second is that I will not be able to obsess over those two pieces because I’m too focused (theoretically) on those smaller goals.  The third is that, once everything is all put together and taken care of, if the missing pieces haven’t presented a solution without my interference or filled themselves in, I will be able to come at them from a fresh direction and without any niggling distractions or lingering "to dos".

Does this make sense?  In my mind it does.

So I wrote two lists, neither of which, I believe, is fully complete.  I discovered that most of the things I’ve been putting off can be resolved by something as simple as borrowing a stepladder.

And in the past two days I have cleaned and scrubbed and pulled all the furniture from the walls.  I have hung posters and things that have been waiting around to become decor.  I have pulled everything off of surfaces and cleaned the woodwork and washed the glass that’s readily visible.  And it’s stupid things like dusting the top of the refrigerator (which is above my head…  I can’t even SEE up there) and emptying out the medicine cabinet, throwing away the things that need to go and reorganizing everything.  It’s all the things that you don’t think about, or you don’t see or…  you know, the things that just don’t get DONE.

There are no more excuses.  I have been living in this apartment for over a year and I still have boxes of books that haven’t even been sorted.  Some of the books that are on the available shelves are ones I don’t use, it’s time to cycle them.  My storage room has EXPLODED and I’m done with the dismissive phrase of "When I have time" because, you know, if we’re being honest here, I HAVE the time, it’s the motivation that’s been missing.  I don’t have better things to do, I have more desirable things to do, less productive things to do, things that only allow me to procrastinate further and not to see the things I don’t want to think about.  No more excuses.

So far, I am thinking about it LESS.  The things that I have dwelt upon for much of the year, I’ll be honest, I’m still dwelling on a bit, but not as much because I have all these other things I need to do and I keep thinking of new things that I should have put on my list.  All of this provides a good distraction.  I find that if you focus too hard on the things you wish you had, the things that are missing, you wind up getting too wrapped up.

So when Girl was venting about all the same problems I’ve been feeling I told her, "I’m going to give you the advice that I have given myself and that I am trying to follow."  And she thought about it and started listing out all the things that she had been putting off and fell right into the "my life is a mess, I need to clean my house" mentality, which we both understand.  I don’t know if she’s planning to follow it, but for my part, it seems to be working.