Monday, December 16, 2013

Ta da?

Think Kit Day 16: A-ha! A discovery!

What did you discover this year? Was it accidental or on purpose? What did you learn?

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I discovered I am capable of lying to myself for long stretches of time. Worse, I am capable of believing these lies.

I know I'm being too hard on myself, but I don't know a better way to put it at almost 4 a.m. when I'm exhausted but also wired for sound, when I'm not getting in bed because there are apparently still things to say, when it would seem a bit of my cats' full-moon crazy has rubbed off on me.

My house has been in a state of chaos for longer than I can remember and I can't seem to fix it. I find I do just enough to get by and exercise willful ignorance for the rest. I could remedy things pretty easily -- move the fridge pack of Diet Coke from the living room to the fridge, perhaps -- but I don't. I sit across the room, looking at the soda and thinking about moving it. I'm not sure if I'm lazy, some kind of paralyzed, or trying to teach myself telepathy.

The lies are rich like fudge at night. Tomorrow I'm going to tackle the den. When I get back from the bank, I'll organize my desk. I'll pick up those five things. 25 things. I'll do five things an hour. I'll gather all the reusable grocery bags together and then I'll put the broom on the back porch and take the new pack of sponges to the kitchen and clean off that cluttered bookcase. I will have everything done by the time my guests come to town. I will be done by my birthday; I will be done living like this before I'm 40. I will get started before Christmas. By the end of the year, this will all be a memory.

The result is nearly non-stop brain chatter that drives me crazy. Instead of being productive, I think endlessly about productivity while nothing happens. I have become a kind of numb I cannot thaw. I want to ask for help, but I'm too embarrassed to open the door -- figuratively and literally -- to anyone else.

Since I'm still stuck, I can't really say I've learned anything. Besides the fact that I need to stop spinning yarns and just make a sweater already.

1 comment:

kerry said...

I kind of do that, too. I have to take off the pressure to fix it all, and do one little thing. Which often leads to doing another little thing, and in the right times I eventually get a little bit of something done.

And I can't look at all of what needs to get done or I get derailed again.