I read an article about people who retrofitted a vintage Airstream trailer with self-sustaining power systems, and I curse myself for not spending money -- when I had it -- on life on the open road. I could have bought a pickup, an Airstream, and be living in Montana, working as a waitress at a diner and screwing cowboys until the next wind blows me back onto the road.
I could start a Master's In English. Learn German/French. Teach English to Mexicans. Attend an Obama for America healthcare-campaign meeting. Justify every breath I take.
You see how it goes. I did sign up for a class in QuickBooks 2008 to brush up my skills there, which took some of the pressure off. (It's at a city college - if you've seen My Big Fat Greek Wedding, it's where she goes for computer classes. It's near an El stop that reeks of grease from the fried-chicken store underneath it.)
So in between sending out resumes to employers who never respond, I've begun stripping the woodwork in my living room. Doing this while keeping yourself/your cats/your rabbits from getting cancer is no small feat, and my living room looks rather Downtown Mogadishu-ish
(-esque?).
Mondays and Tuesdays are my non-babysitting days, so I try to make the most of them (I'm already getting worked up because I feel that I should use them to the max, i.e., drive to Milwaukee/Minnesota/Indiana-James Dean's grave. Tick, tick, tick...) So after sending out a resume and mailing my sister's birthday card, and riding the bike for a bit to keep the kinks out of my hips (and because with all this time I should be able to have a perfectly worked-out body. tick, tick, tick..), I settled down to the next leg of window-stripping (I've cut myself some slack and have as a goal just the windows at first). The process is heat gun, then paint stripper to remove residue, then scraping, then sanding. Then muscle cream and natural relaxants.
So I was outside heat-stripping a window sash and I realized I hadn't painted any more paintings, and had though to get a series done. Tick, tick, tick...
"But this needs to be finished," I thought.
Then the voice said, "But it's not making you any money."
Ah. Good point. Excellent point. I finished the sash, put it in the basement, and tomorrow will start the next painting.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
2 comments:
That's a defeatist attitude and you know it. It's not an inability to stay focused and unfragmented, but rather an ability to stay unfocused and fragmented.
So, we're actually overachievers! So I shouldn't be concerned when I can't get through my To Do list in a single day, because it just means that I'm superb at being sidetracked from everything I want to accomplish.
Did I mention I got mangos today? So good!
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