02.23.06
Dust bunnies, dirty socks, and unfinished business
I spent most of my three-day weekend cleaning.
After brunch on Saturday, and taking Josh to the airport, I headed home to try to sort through the human disaster area that was my apartment. I continued to clean non-stop until 2am, and the next day, I cleaned from 11am until 7pm, all in preparation for company — Andy and Dominic were coming to my apartment for the first time for some Karaoke Revolution and Hangar One lemon drops.
As I was sorting through the mess, I really started to wonder — does anyone else have to spend so much time preparing to have a few guests over on a casual evening? What if I needed to have unexpected company? Being embarrassed of the way that I’m living is a total drain on my psyche, and I’ve tried to get past this issue countless times, all to no avail.
It’s not just my apartment. My Jetta’s trunk is full of things from July when I moved here that I haven’t bothered to unpack yet. I have a box full of unopened mail. A box. This isn’t just any box — it’s the box that my new 20.4″ Samsung LCD monitor came in — the same monitor I was setting up when I should have been cleaning my filthy apartment. That’s a lot of mail. It has piled up so much that I didn’t realize I had received a new Chase MasterCard until I got an email about it. Then, I had to dig through the mounds of mail looking for the one envelope with the real credit card in it (not the one with John Q. Public’s name on it).
I’m happy to say that my social gathering was a success, and that my apartment was immaculate by the time Andy and Dominic arrived, save a few tiny details that I didn’t have time to get to. They had never seen my apartment before, so they couldn’t possibly know the extent of my madness, and thanks to the lack of photographic evidence, they will never have to.
Staring around me from my desk, there are a few tiny things amiss, but Mom was right — it really does feel so much better to work and live and play in a clean space. So why is it that I have such a hard time? I’m a successful web developer with a good job, a nice car (apart from the trunk), and a nice apartment.
Why the self-sabotage?
I used to think it was a lack of motivation. I simply can’t get motivated, I would tell myself. But believe it or not, it all comes back to those three letters: ADD. It’s not that I don’t feel like doing anything — it’s that I have too much that I want to do. Sitting here, concentrating on writing a blog post after over a week of silence is such a relief. Although there are 1,200 different things that I could be doing right now, such as putting away jeans, or watching Sunday’s episode of Charmed, or starting the dishwasher, or folding laundry … the list goes on … I’m focused on something. That’s the sign of a fantastic night.
Tonight was one of those nights. I came home and ate my steak & chili bowl from Quizno’s, and immediately got to work cleaning up what was left of the mess left from last night’s dinner with Dominic. I did what seemed like hours of work but looked at the clock on the microwave and it was barely 10pm. In hardly a blink, my place went back to being almost acceptable.
It’s so incredibly cliché when I think about the concept of “taking things one day at a time” but it seems to be the only thing working for me at the moment. I’m taking inventory of the successes and failures, and if one more thing is gone from my enormous to-do list of life by the time I collapse into bed at night, it should be a mark of success. It’s just hard to keep that in perspective some days.
When there are so many things that I want to do, how can I ever feel fulfilled without finishing them all? And how can I keep that discouragement from preventing me from finishing anything?
Tags: ADD, cleaning, karaoke, life, organization