Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Spring Cleaning My Brain

Deb: So ... Colin and I set out in the last month to rip through the house and divest ourselves of every single thing we did not need.

We cleaned out the closets, we threw out old rags,
We emptied the rec-room of boxes and bags!

And all through this tornado of tidy, this this ... cyclone of sweep, I kept saying over and over...”I want to get this all done and then spend the summer reading books, lounging in the garden and listening to the birds.”

And then I read something. It was the February 26th quote from my “Women Who Do Too Much” calendar that my husband buys me every year. The reason I just read it today was because I have been too busy since Christmas to open it. TRUE STORY.

I would love to give you the exact quote in the calendar, but I accidently recycled the fucker during my “Hurricane of House Proud”.

Basically, and in a nutshell, the gist of the quote was, “Do we get addicted to being busy?”

The quote stopped me cold when I glanced at it, my arms full of winter shoes that needed a cubbyhole in which to spend the summer.

But on the way up the stairs, all the while thinking of colours for the new paint job on the house, I thought, “AM I addicted to being busy?”

“I don’t think I am!!!” was my swift and panicked response.

But then I had to ask myself honestly ... when my last gas receipt is filed for taxes and the last electrical cord that belongs to something we no longer own is discarded, what will I do?

Will I hunker with my book?
Without guilt?
My husband thinks no.
Bastard.
I think ... YES ... Maybe ... I don’t know ... Quit bugging me.

But I have a goal.

And this is it:

Wake up. Eat breakfast and read paper. Tidy. Work out. Read. Listen to records and watch spring bloom out the window. Read. Think thoughts. Nod off. Drool a bit.


I don’t want to start taking time for myself because I have no options. I want it to be a choice.

So dear readers, think of me. And when you do. Picture me ... reading. Thinking. Drooling. 

Barbara: This is so funny. Funny ha ha because, well, you’re funny ha ha, Deb. But also funny ironic. I have been asking myself the same question now that three major writing deadlines have just been met. I am wiped … and yet, and yet, my mind wanders to two more soft deadlines that I want to meet. Oh, the laptop beckons. Oh, the mind wants to journey away again. And then I contemplate all the spring-cleaning, which is yelling at me over the piles of winter coats, boots, old Tupperware, endless receipts, bulging purses, unshelved books, and aging pantry staples.

My name is Barbara and I am a workaholic.

But how do you change if you don’t wanna??!! (but really need to…)

36 comments:

  1. I'm definitely addicted to busy. I have in the last few months taken on so much that I literally work every waking hour. I do my day job then go home and write, work on book trailers, swag, etc, etc.

    I don't know why I've done this. I didn't used to be this way.

    They should have a 12 step program.

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  2. Yeah Megan, sounds pretty much like me. But, and here's the thing. If your work brings you a good deal of your daily dose of joy, then why change? My issue is, I crave the relax and the read and the think, so I feel that I must change. We'll see...12 step hmmmmmmnnnnn

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  3. Wow busy ladies. My life isn't quite that busy although I have done some spring cleaning and found alot of things that needed to be cleaned and threw out. That and I just love the spring. I love everything about spring. My grandparents however are a whole different story.They clean everyday but yet still find something to reorginize or go through or for me to go through when I am home. They have already got a huge list of things that they want to go through like old records and papers and for some strange reason they move the furniture around but only in the spring. But I am not sure why. So I am not busy yet but I will be here in just a few days I am sure of it.

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  4. I know how to relax. It has taken me years but I now have so much free time that I can't possibly fill it. Sometimes mindless TV watching, a good book or a walk. But some days Target beckons me and I find myself even relaxing at Target as I drift from row to row looking and buying things that I am not sure I need but merely want. Great blog today. I have gone from a doer to a relaxer.

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  5. I think being addiction to being busy is better than the other thing. I am a solid believer in inertia and if I let myself slow down, I won't go again...

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  6. Lyndsie it would be such fun to go through all these old things. You are right. It would not seem like work to me!

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  7. Ouch, I think you just touched a nerve... I'm definitely an addict of busy. Having had my life turned upside down by circumstances out of my control recently, I realized that not being busy for the first time in as long as I can remember turned out to be pretty disastrous - I ended up not being able to motivate myself to do ANYTHING at all. So, back to the busy, I say. As long as I remember to breathe every now and then, I think I'm okay...

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  8. Hart you are so right. I guess I am just looking for a little balance. Just a little. Know when to run around and know when to sit down and relax. My goal. Attainable? Bets are being placed.

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  9. Cruella that is an interesting point of view. What happens if your busy turns into lazy and unmotivated? Hmmmmmnnn. I guess right now I can't imagine that ever happening but who knows right?

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  10. As with all things....balance.
    A little bit of busy goes nicely with a side of napping and watching the flowers bloom.
    I don't think you can be truly happy without both.

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  11. See, I think I'm that latter bit, Deb - although it's not lazy and unmotivated, so much as it's overwhelmed and paralyzed.

    I have a continual fantasy that if I can just clean and organize everything, I will then be a perfectly successful adult. Miraculously, bills will be paid on time, the cats will always be fed, always have a sparkling clean litterbox, and I will be able to gracefully float out of bed every morning to my writing desk, where lovely prose will drip from my fingers before I deign to do the work that pays the bills before retiring to a glass of wine and a good (intelligent, educational, engaging) book by low light and candles in the evening.

    The reality is a lot more chaotic and messy and involves far fewer clean litterboxes, more forced prose, and entirely too much NCIS.

    Sometimes, the fantasy seems so far away, it's hard to figure out how to even get halfway there. (And is halfway there even good enough, or will it just rub in the fact that I'm really nowhere near where I want to be?)

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  12. Yes Hollye balance. That is what I seek. Where did you buy yours? :-)
    Kelly will it ever be perfect? I don't think so. But if you compared it to a glass of wine, half way there would still be a wonderful half glass of wine. I will take half way there in a sec. But I do know what you mean. My husband works his butt of but man can he relax. I envy him so much. And I call him stuff under my breath.

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  13. It's Xeno's Paradox, house-cleaning edition. ;-)

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  14. So true Kelly. When I am busy am I finishing anything? Or am I back at the beginning looking to finish. The bane of housework and tidying. But when you DO tidy, don't you always swear you will never mess the area again. This is another in the long line of lies we tell ourselves.

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  15. The vicious circle!! That's why we hate it -- because it feels unbeatable. So balance. But how???

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  16. My problem is that when I'm busy doing boring but really important stuff - like assignments, I think to myself 'when I'm done studying, I'm going to....' and I end up with this huge list in my head of ways I'm going to enjoy myself when I graduate. Well I graduated last year... and promptly forgot all my plans! I then got so bored (it didn't help that I was also jobless at the time and the job market was not good) I ended up starting a new course 3 months later! I'm graduating again in November. This time I'm writing down my list of ways to relax ;-) and I've also got a job to occupy some of my time :-)

    Elle

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  17. Oh Elle I love this. Job and relax, after some really hard work. Perfect sweet balance.

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  18. haha well, it's a good theory anyway... whether I actually manage to put it in practice is another story :-P The main problem is that if I allow myself to relax and have a bit of fun, I generally start to feel guilty for procrastinating when there's always important (and not fun) things to do :-(

    Elle

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  19. Yes. Nutshell. Guilt. That is my issue. One word. Guilt. Like I don't deserve to be JUST sitting and reading. Clearly so many of us feel that. Thanks Elle.

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  20. Yes, busy is the goal. I felt like I accomplished a lot today when I hit the Bed Bath & Beyond, pet food store and wine store after work. Too busy to realize it is not a priority. Ok, the cat food for the blind cat was.

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  21. "But when you DO tidy, don't you always swear you will never mess the area again."

    Always. Actually, laundry is my big failing here. Whenever I get the pile down to manageable (or gone), I tell myself "never again... every time there is a single small basket, I will do laundry, life will be easier..."

    And a month later, it's time to scale Mt Laundry once more.

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  22. Kelly, I have the same fantasy, that if I could ever get everything perfectly clean and organized that life would somehow suddenly be perfect. Sadly, that just doesn't happen.

    And I am in a lazy, unmotivated stage right now. And the pity of it is that if I ever got going, it would all get clean...

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  23. Tsumicat, I hear you. And yet despite my need to balance life, there is nothing I love more than striking tasks off the list! And I don't even have a blind cat.

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  24. Kelly we do it all the time. "Okay so let's not put any extra junk on this counter, it's just for mail"-cut to BURIED ALIVE!
    April, for me, it does seem perfect when I do it. For about a day!

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  25. Oh Kelly Kelly Kelly, laundry *sigh* that's me. Hate it. And i don't iron, I spritz with water and shake. lol!

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  26. Barb I keep meaning to tell you that I tried the spritz and it doesn't work for me. Too too anal. The clothes must be CRISP! Not just wrinkle free. Sad or what?

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  27. On the contrary, Deb, I think this makes ME the sad one :)

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  28. Isn't that the worst, April? I know, intellectually, that if I just got off my ass and DID, it wouldn't take that long at all. And yet...


    Barbara, I see we are from the same school of laundry thought. "Pull it out of the dryer quickly, shake and hang." (I also don't buy things that require ironing.) But hey, the next time you're in Philly, Deb, you're welcome to crisp my cltohes for me. ;-)

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  29. Kelly I got into a little trouble in 1986 for crisping someone's clothes. I shan't make the same mistake again!

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  30. Well, my motivation for completely gutting the house just got a lot easier. I am in a cleaning and cleaning out frenzy. If y'all've been following the news lately, my region has been one of the top stories (Arkansas and southeast Missouri). We've had tornadoes and flooding (and, oh God, the levee breached in Pocahontus today). It's crazy around here. Absolutely crazy. My son and I are OK, but we are surrounded by thousands of people who are not. Suddenly, it's a lot easier to cull our belongings and stack them into donation boxes. Our last tornado of this front was yesterday afternoon. Yet again, I put my son in the hallway with his thick blanket from his bed over him while the tornado sirens wailed from the tower by the courthouse a couple of blocks away. *sigh* Mercifully, it lifted off the ground before coming into our city limits. But, there's decimation in the little towns about 25 miles down the highway. (One of the earlier waves of the storms did damage at my son's school.) I know the woman who runs the local Red Cross office (her son used to go to school with my son), and I hope to plop down boxes of stuff in the floor of her office on Monday.

    Also, my college town, Tuscaloosa, Alabama, (I'm class of '94 - Roll Tide) was hit by a deadly tornado yesterday. The tornado ripped a path up to the intersection of McFarland (the main road in Tuscaloosa) and 15th St. (this is one of the biggest intersections in Tusc. and is on the edge of campus). The hospital I used to work at was damaged. Their trauma bay (where I did EMT training years ago) is receiving patients but running on emergency generators. They just put out a plea to the state capital to send a mobile care unit (think modern day MASH). The Krispy Kreme on the edge of campus where I used to hang out with the Rocky Horror cast was flattened. The mall where we all shopped was hit. It's so weird seeing the edge of campus destroyed. I'm frantically trying to get ahold of my T-town people but have only heard back from one (my friend Sam, math teacher and best St. Patrick's part thrower ever - he was one of the ushers at my wedding). I'm especially freaked about my friend Jimmy and his wife as their house is in the neighborhood that's right behind some of the destroyed businesses. And, I can't get ahold of my old campus minister to see how the Wesley foundation faired. I can't get ahold of Margaret or anyone else from New College. I keep willing my email to update and my phone to ring, but they don't.

    Deb, it's gotten to where I can't read the news articles and look at the pictures anymore. I understand where you're coming from, now.

    My cleaned-out-stuff-stacked-in-boxes will stay local for aid in this 5 county area. But, I'm mercilessly gutting my yarn stash and fabric bucket so I can spend the next several weeks whipping up hats, scarves, and blankets to replace winter-wear for folks in Tuscaloosa. And, I'm sorting through my beads and felts to whip up some children's Christmas ornaments. I'll be in T-town over the summer at least once (probably twice) and can drop off aid for the coming winter with some paramedic friends of mine.

    But, back to where I live now, if any of you feel so moved, please give through CAM, UMCOR, the Red Cross, or your preferred donation avenue for Arkansas/Missouri tornado/flood relief. This region has been hit very hard, and the damage and loss is on an indescribably scale. County after county, town after town of breached levees, lost homes, injured people, the dead, washed out highways and bridges, lost livelihoods, and more.

    Deb, to give perspective, Vilonia, one of the Arkansas towns destroyed by a tornado (there were deaths) this week is about 15 miles from the theatre where your husband's show was earlier this month.

    *goes back to sorting out my son's clothes and mine and going through my pots and pans cabinets to see what we can spare to take to P's office on Monday*

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  31. Rigel, that's terrible news! My heart goes out to you and all your friends, family and neighbours!

    Elle

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  32. Thank you, Elle. My family is safe. My mother (in AL) and I have tracked down all my relatives further over in the Arkansas. Some of them did have to flee their home in the middle of the night, but all are safe and accounted for.

    I have only heard about 2 of my Tuscaloosa friends so far. I'm still trying to get word of the others.

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  33. Rigel I am glad you and ur son are ok. We just had a bad storm here but that was it. My heart goes out to all those in need.Sending prayer out ur all's ways

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  35. Rigel, I'm glad you and your son are okay. I live in Alabama, and those tornadoes on Wednesday scared the hell out of me. Fortunately, my family and I made it through alright, but there are so many who didn't. It upset me so much to watch it on the tv yesterday that I just had to shut it off. Absolutely catastrophic...

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  36. Oh yes, balance, yee I seek. And Oh god I am glad for all those who survived the tornados.Oh lord. I live in a tiny place. I seek to throw out. I give praise that the weather does not decide for me.

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