KISS

Procrastination is a Skill

You know those things that you just don't want to do? Ever. I call it my "To Don't List". It is comprised of all the things that I have to do, but I avoid doing at all costs. I have a lot of things on this list. They change, like the only thing that's constant.

Today's To Don't:
-Think "long term"
-Send one of my best friends her wedding present (they were married in October. I was in the wedding)
-Put the finishing touches on the tape cube
-Exercise
-Clean upstairs (including but not limited to laundry, putting away my shoes, changing the sheets, wiping down the counter)
-Drop my blue shoes off to be cleaned after stupidly wearing them in the rain
-Filing paid bills
-Replace windshield wipers, even though car was in the shop last week
-Return an ugly photo album to Target without the receipt

Here's what I have done, just today to avoid these tasks (in no particular order):
-Watched So You Think You Can Dance
-Chatted for 20 minutes on the phone to a friend who I lost touch with after we slept together
-Walked to three different places for lunch. Asking at each, what the wait would be for a table for one, thinking about it just long enough that it was uncomfortable that I was still standing there and not speaking before respectfully declining. (For those of you who have to know how that one ended, I got tacos at a walk-up window.)
-Emailed Paul about the tacos
-Baked cookies
-Put a nice little Scanner care package together for Paul. Searching the office for just the right envelope. Never found it, but not for lack of trying
-Wrote this
-Tried to surprise Chris Fred at work, but couldn't remember exactly which one was his studio and couldn't find it just by looking due to glare. It was stalkerific.
-Clipped my toenails
-Wrestled with Bird

I feel better just getting that out there.

Addiction to Other's Addictions

I have a thing for recovering addicts. Well, a thing for books about recovering addicts anyway. I love getting suggestions from people on what I should read. I mix those in with the classics and what I should have read in High School, sans Cliff this time around, and that keeps my book plate pretty full. Why there is such a process to this for me, is that I just (I feel like it's "just" it might be like three years now) started reading fiction.

Fiction, to me, was a waste of time. Why do I care what someone else made up? If I'm going to read I'm going to learn something true about someone or something. Well, with a lot of free time on my hands during the winters in New York, I loosened my self-imposed restrictions and started taking suggestions on fiction from trusted sources and was pleasantly pleased with the outcome. So long story, very long, I read fiction now. However, I still have this huge tendency toward autobiographical stuff.

A few months ago, pre my Palahniuk phase, I was reading some of the book in my "suggestions" category. After about three, all of which I enjoyed, I started to realized that there was a common theme. How easy it is to see them now that I don't have to write papers on them. People kept giving me books to read that were personal recounts of people who at the time were going through rehab. Addition to alcohol, drugs, sex, all three and then some.

This was interesting to me on a couple of levels. I do not have an addictive personality. Obsessive, yes. Addictive, no. Yet, I was really into reading what it is like to be addicted, to need, to crave, to be completely out of control. Then there was the steps that they took to beat it, sometimes successfully, sometimes not, but always with relapses and set-backs. I guess I just always thought that people, myself included, enjoyed consuming media that they could relate to and wouldn't necessarily gravitate toward a subject matter so absent from their own lives (this is extra interesting to me in this case as I was reading about being self-destructive. I get when people stray from stuff they can directly relate to for an escape, they go to happy places. The places I was going in these books were far from happy). After I got over the contradictions between my life and how I was filling my head in my free time, I started to wonder why my friends would keep suggesting these books to me, and why I subsequently sought them out on my own.

I know the first step is admitting you have a problem, but really? Maybe I'm addicted to books about addiction, now that would be messed up...especially because I don't think they have groups for that.

Nothing is Safe

Everything is irrational. In some way, in some capacity. I, for instance am irrational for many reasons, just one being I'm really mad at an inanimate object right now for not functioning properly. But that's not that worrisome, everyone yells at their computer or their TV, maybe not believing it will have an affect, but hoping just a little bit that it will make them feel better.

Reason number two, sitting in my recliner, I just stared at my vertical blinds for at least three minutes wondering if they ever stopped moving. I don't think they do. The fan's always on, and I'm pretty sure their movement's sound and affect on the light coming into the living room in the middle of the night is what makes Bird fall off her perch--well it's either that or nightmares, not sure what would constitute a nightmare for Bird though, maybe someone incessantly repeating, "Polly wanna cracker?" Some neighborhood kids did that once, she picked it up and repeated it in this horrible mock parrot voice, it wasn't her most endearing of times, but she, thankfully, has stored that one away for another time, I can only hope that her very emphatic and well annunciated use of the word "fuck" goes with it.

I think my refrigerator is irrational for wanting to ever contain more than a couple of mismatched beers other people brought over and condiments. Until I have some major breakthrough and I become different for some reason, I can't see this changing in at least the next two and a half years.

My realization that I, along with everything that surrounds me, is somehow irrational comes from a conversation I had with a therapist this morning, she's not my therapist, even though the more I think about it, I probably need one. I told her that I was in feeling introspective and when she asked what sparked this look inside and I told her the destructive path my head had taken in less than half an hour, her (I'm sure) unofficial response was, "you're being irrational" (she prefaced that with "I don't think you're a crazy person"). I told her, oh sure, I knew that (in both instances). Then I started thinking my only problem is I'm totally okay with being unreasonable in all areas of my life. The only area where I use even the slightest bit of reason is balancing my checkbook. So I will always know just how little money I have...then spend way too much, which is unreasonable.

I am now going to get my car washed, it has been raining most of the morning and promises to do so through the weekend. It's a vicious little spin cycle I put myself in.