This post is part of my 2022 Word Project. You can read what that’s about here.
Saturday, April 8, 2023
12:19pm
It’s Saturday. Kevin has just gone. I’m exhausted because we stayed up late talking and drinking cocktails, a sending off. I got up early to say goodbye, then zonked out again until it was time to go to the Farmers Market.
I did not want to go to the Farmers Market. Normally I love it, but sometimes I love sleep more. I literally only got myself out of bed for the strawberries.
Last week I bought two containers. This week I bought four. That means I can share them with Ralph this time.
It’s Saturday and everything inside me is screaming to stay on the couch all day but the OCD in me cannot. There are too many things to do.
For one, our office is now an office again, no longer a guest bedroom. So I have to make it office-ish. That involves dusting and organizing and oiling up the treadmills, which have seen no use for the past three months.
Monday we need to be back on the treadmills.
For another, I think every article of clothing and every last towel I own is in the laundry.
Do you know what I remember? I remember Saturdays being about sleeping as late as possible and then spiffing up to go out clubbing until the wee hours.
But that was pretty much half my life ago. Nowadays I get excited about being able to change the sheets. I look forward to bacon and a reprieve from watching oatmeal explode all over the stove.
My, how far we’ve come.
I’m also thinking ahead to Monday, which seems like a whole do-over. Without Kevin here, routine will settle in.
Have I mentioned the productivity course I just finished? It was truly fabulous. Not so much that I learned things I’d never known, but more that I got a kick in the behind to get my act together.
I’ve been nothing if not mired in malaise lately.
Hard to believe, what with all my talk of cocktails and strawberries. But those are the moments in between. The rest of the moments are all about the billion things clamoring to be next.
The estate planning we’re doing with Ralph’s mother that has turned into a torrent of paperwork, lost paperwork, and more paperwork. The server, god help it, the server. The friend I keep meaning to call and the gift I keep forgetting to buy and the thing I have to get to UPS so it can go back to Amazon for the 15th time.
The printer ink that ran out so I bought more ink and then instead of throwing the old cartridge in a landfill, I can return it to HP, which is great, except I have to get it to the post office and the last time I tried that, I went on a Thursday at 2:08pm only to find out that the post office closes at 2 on Thursdays.
Next!
I’m not complaining. I’m just trying to figure out what next is. In the most circuitous way possible, by sitting on the couch and thinking about it. Ulterior motives.
I have lists. Trust me, I have lists. I even put things on the list in some order of what’s next. But it all seems very hard.
For instance, I have to get on Amazon and order new sandpaper for the whiskey barrel I’m refinishing. That would seem like a simple task, easier, say, than going to Target to buy it. No need to put on pants, leave the house, find parking, walk, stand in line waiting… waiting… waiting…
But buying it on Amazon involves searching for it, and filtering through the 50 unrelated things that Amazon wants to advertise to me, to get to the thing that seems like what I want, but then thinking it has to be cheaper from another vendor, so scrolling through multiple pages of items, then reading reviews to find out that any given sandpaper is both the best and the worst thing ever, then making a decision.
It’s quite a bit more taxing than one might think.
So it goes on the list, and I keep looking at it and thinking, I really should just buy the sandpaper.
Instead I add six more things to the list.
It’s gotten to the point where I’m stuck in my own indecision. There are too many things and most of them are tiny. You know how if you have a big lug of a task, you just sort of suck it up and get it done? You say ok, big lug of a task, it’s Saturday and I’m going to tackle you and take you down.
Then at the end of the day you’re exhausted but satisfied.
When you have a billion tiny things, you get through say, fifteen, and you’re exhausted and it feels like you’ve done all billion, but they’re still there, and you don’t feel satisfied.
Still, I’m not complaining. I’m just ramping up. Talking myself into doing whatever is next.
In all my years of playing mind games with myself and taking productivity courses and reading motivational books, there is only one way that works for me when it comes to getting things done.
Just do what’s next.
Not planning it, not thinking about it, not deciding it. Just doing it.
Sort of like getting on the yoga mat. You don’t do it because you decide to, you do it because you fall out of bed and there it is.
And then you do the next thing.
This is how I get myself moving.
First talk about it a lot, then avoid it a little, then just pick the next thing and do it.
So what’s next?
That’s the thing with next. Something always has to be it. So many things want to be it. Things fight over it and all demand attention. But only one can assume the role.
No amount of productivity courses is going to solve that one.
So what’s next?
Whatever’s next.
It’s Saturday. I’m exhausted. But I just crossed “couch time” off the list and there are sheets that need changing.
Next!
Photo: the wall outside a local bar called Amendment XVIII. The cocktails are hit or miss, but it’s a fun atmosphere. They usually project a movie on the wall but on this day, the projector didn’t seem to be working. It seemed hilariously appropriate to today’s word.