identifying

PROBLEM SOLVING – still a gerbil on a wheel

It’s hard to pull up my socks once they’ve fallen down. The struggle is real. Things are piling up on my desk, the dining room table and in my head again. I hope I have caught myself in time before I fall completely down the rabbit hole. I’ve stopped the conversation on the keyboard for just a week. It is hard starting again. I’ll just sit awhile and drink my tea and try to feel out where the difficulty lies. There’s no rush. It’s not going away. It’s waiting for me.

What I’ve learned from this is not to let things come to a grinding halt. It felt good the first day so I did it again the next and the next and so on. And here I am, trying to work myself back into a schedule, a routine of some sort wherein I can feel good and alive – that I am interacting with and a part of the world. I am not happy with persistent languor, hanging out amidst and buried under my unfiled, undelt with and unfinished piles.

When I think of clearing and dealing with it all, I feel overwhelmed and hopeless. I move a few things around and about. I have not made space or homes for anything and everything. It’s not a surprise that I got nowhere and gave up, moving on to familiar, more comfortable activities like watching Inspector Wexford on YouTube. It’s not a bad thing. It’s a British crime series, a Ruth Rendall mystery. The episodes have a story and plot. They are quite unlike a lot of modern American crime shows where the catch is violence, sex and fast car chases. Still, it is a crutch I fall on when it is hard for me to do what I need to be doing.

Talking about movies and distractions, I’ve come to realize that I am addicted to crime genres in movies, TV shows and books as well. I haven’t been always so. I used to like a good story and romance. Now I find them a bit tedious and slow going. My attention span have been shortened by action dramas and crime fiction. I’m trying to work my way back to being not so lazy. I used to read books like Marjorie Morningstar and East of Eden. Now I read Sue Grafton’s alphabet mystery series and such. But I am working on J.R. Rowling’s Casual Vacancy. It’s slow going but she is a very good writer with lots of detailed descriptions. It’s a good exercise for slowing my brain and hopefully help increase my attention span.

I am having a wee bit of success. I’m concentrating on finishing this post. I am taking more time in proof reading and editing. Hopefully I am making more sense. I’ve identified a few of my clutter problems. I need to find homes for my things so that they are not strewn here and there. I need to deal with my mail (electronic and snail) daily. They build up quicker than I can think. Yesterday I deleted hundreds of emails, some from July. I’ve been in this spot more than a few times. I’m still the gerbil on the wheel. The best solution for me is to think things through slowly, identify, have an action plan and follow through.

GETTING MY SHIT TOGETHER

I surely struggle with consistency and energy. I suppose you do, too. It’s always good to have company. It’s my words I’m struggling with now. But I’ve come to my space. The keyboard is on my lap, my cup of tea nearby. Across the back alley, the roofers are tap, tap,tapping with their hammers. They sound like woodpeckers. A crow caws nearby.

It’s a perfect August day. The sun shining. The petunias and nasturiums nodding their heads in the breeze. I shall just sit here and not worry so much about accomplishing and doing. It is trying that I can’t quite get my shit together. But really, what does that mean anyways? Oh brother, Sheba is next to me. She’s just let go some of her metal-melting farts. Phew!

I’m feeling like hell in the mornings,  waking with aching in every possible joint – down to the toes. I just know that autumn is in the air even if I didn’t know what month it is. Changes are coming. Changes are here. Some of it’s scary. A lot of it is frightening – neo-Nazis, White Supremacists, Donald Trump, neighbours… The list is long. It’s good to ventilate, even if it is just listing. At least I’ve identified some of the things nagging at me. I’m not just whistling in the dark.

I have pushed my way through the wet paper bag. I’ve broken free. Despite my fatigue, I’ve trimmed off the dead raspberry canes, gathered up some other garden wastes and deposited them all in the Green Bin. The City truck has kindly come by. I’ve dumped a bag of peat moss in the front flower bed. I hope that will give the petunias there a much needed boost.

The hammering is getting more insistent – and annoying. It’s not conducive to my tapping any more. It’s giving me a headache. It’s a sign to close shop. I think I work best in short spurts. I just need to have more spurts in a day.