“Going solo” can drive you whacky! A typical day’s worth of reasons......
1. Your desk turns into the remnants of a food court lunchtime aftermath gone wild.
2. You are having a much sought after, rarely achieved successful moment of concentration, and the neighborhood ice cream truck trundles down the steet and stops under your window, plaintively playing its repetitive, meant-to-break-your concentration” tune for a minumum of 17 times.
3. Your refrigerator is seriously considering whether to break down or not after you’ve perused its contents for 33 times that day.
4. When you run out of desk space, you convert your less-than-spotless kitchen table, your already cluttered living room floor, and your unmade bed into alternative work spaces, thereby rendering your entire abode into a “non-guest friendly” environment.
5. When you get to a really tough part of your project, your eyes start to droop, and you lay down to take a nap, on top of your unmade bed piled up with your alternate project you haven’t yet tackled.
6. Just at the moment you are finally “in the zone”, where you are about to do your most intense work that needs your full attention, concentration, and cooperation (posterior fully planted in chair, fingers poised above keyboard, food hankerings quieted, bathroom needs attended to, and your ever-increasing supply of large bag of procrasination tricks quieted down and peacefully playing by themselves in the corner) , the garden crew starts to work in full force with whining lawnmowers, buzzing electric clippers, and roaring leaf blowers.
7. You discover that you are, in fact, a slob, and the cluttered desk you had at work was NOT just an indication of how busy you were, but just a foreshadowing of the enormous potential for messiness and disorder you really possessed.
8. You are both the sole filler and emptier of your own office wastebasket.
9. Your computer monitor is so covered with cryptically scribbled, perpetually falling off Post-It notes, that you are considering opening up a museum with a hefty admission to house your collection and recoup a small portion of your office supply expenses.
10. You would rather blog than work.
Today I didn't leave the apartment. No, no, that's not true, I DID go and take a mini jaunt and peer into my mailbox. I spent the whole day thinking about what I WOULD do rather than focusing on what I COULD do while worrying about all the things I SHOULD do but didn't.
I spent the whole day on line Internet researching myself into a stupor and sending off informational e-mail requests. I am wrestling with that lovely situation when one tries to figure out 17 paths simultaneously, most of which need building from scratch. In a nutshell....(an interesting expression, "in a nutshell....what about...."in a pillbox" kind of a similar size -- why a pill box, though? oh, pill box hats. whatever THAT meant. Because pills tend to come in...not boxes, not jars, but...what DO you call what pills come in? Receptables? Hmmm, reminds me of something else, that I won't go into. Definitely "jar" is not the right word. "Containers" may be the best, although "containers" covers a lot of territory, right up to shipping containers, which are HUGE, as they have to be, if they're going to contain a flotilla of cars across the ocean (ok, so flotillas are for boats but cars crossing the ocean in ships can squeeze in under the flotilla category, can't they?)
Ahhhhhh, word play is all very well, but NOT the category I was going to do a self-expose (can't figure out how to do the accent) on
Here's the equation: 10 very confused iterations of myself, none with satisfactory or "oh, everything is just fine" sorts of answers......
1 professional, currently unemployed as of Wed Aug 6
1 job seeker, who has sent off an oodle of resumes and highly personalized, effectively targeted cover letters with a response of zero
1 busy networker, who has lined up 4 networking meetings for next week, average cost per meeting, $35
1 freelancer, attempting to drum up freelance business, with 1 free project (meaning zip/nada/zilch in terms of pay, but hopefully beaucoup possibilities in terms of future projects) + 1 paid project that doesn't start until Aug 22.
1 stock portfolio owner with a portfolio that qualifies as miniscule
1 checking account/savings account holder with a today balance in the 3 figures
1 MBA holder who knows "yes, Virginia, inflow MUST exceed outflow in order to thrive long term"
1 maxed-out credit card holder
1 unsure Orange County transient resident
1 low-level philosopher who is asking the 3 pronged who/what/where question as to "why am I here in over-priced, especially when one is unemployed, Orange County place?"
- Prong 1: No "who" (promising relationship w/long term potential)
- Prong 2: Weak "what" (no job, freelance projects iffy)
-Prong 3: Unclear "where" (do I want to be around gridlock, masses of concrete, and a place where most people don't practice or recognize word play, and are more familiar with the term "sex play" than "fair play" the rest of my existance?)
So today, even though I have 5 serious and important things I was supposed to accomplish....(I'll list them, just so I'll sound serious and accomplished, even though I didn't do ONE of them:
1. Meeting notes from a project I just landed
2. Creative brief to explain the project I just landed
3. Designing business cards for my 8-day-old freelance business
4. Proposal for a web project
5. Reviewing 8 lengthy documents that will serve as content for this web pilot project I'm doing for free (I'm in good company, though, a web designer in Iowa is working on it with me too, for free.....
Anyway, I did NONE of those things, instead I pondered on the state of my finances, wondering if it's time to....
1. GET a roommate? (I have a 2-bedroom, but one serves as my office -- I'm looking for the perfect "commuter roommate" who just needs a place 1-2 days a week)
2. BE a roommate?
3. MOVE out of Southern Cal?
a. Oregon
i. Portland
ii. Eugene
iii Ashland
iv Lost Valley
b. Washington
i. Seattle
ii. TBD
c. Northern Cal
i. Ukiah
ii. Berkeley
iii TBD
4. JOIN a community/co-op?
i. North Carolina
ii. Virginia
iii. Who knows?
5. CASH IN my miniscule retirement?
Believe you me, one can EASILY spend a whole day Internet researching 1 through 4, #5 was left unresearched since did not feel like exploring THAT painful option today....
So, off, off, off to bed with me! Tomorrow, yes, tomorrow, I will tackle items 1-5 on my BUSINESS list and do my best to put the PERSONAL LIST on the shelf for now, it's as addictive as trying to get out every last bit of gunk from your innie belly button (even with belly buttons, it's best to follow the 80/20 rule, otherwise, the situation can get quite painful.....
OK, now that I've told on myself, and flogged/blogged on myself publicly, perhaps my business list will somewhat shrink tomorrow....now that I fixed it that I'll be working THE WHOLE ENTIRE WEEKEND.....The procrastinator's price to pay for nonproduction.
Went to bed at 3 AM after extensive Internet trolling, woke up at 7 am, feeling troll-like. Initial task on my procrastinator's list....pay bills. Logged into my banking site, which told me I had a "zero" balance in both my checking and savings account. Since I am now officially unemployed (ok, ok, doing freelance work, but the gig hasn't begun yet and $'s from that are probably at least a month away) I prayed my banking site wasn't colluding with a non-benevolent universe, thunking me on the head with yet another one of those "life lessons" that usually involve painful scenarios with money/relationships/jobs (oftentimes simultaneously) that 1720 1/4 iterations later, I'm still in an endless loop about.
I quickly scanned all withdrawals.....no, no nefarious hacker had zipped away my puny dollars -- although some expenditures looked incomprehensible in retrospect, each one definitely belonged to me (did I really need that whatever it was from that obscure catalog?) Next step -- calling the automated banking service. Yes, indeedy, I DID have some dollars (though leaning now towards 3 figures rather than 4) and so enough to pay this round of utility bills.
So even though no live person in sight, on site (with the exception of myself, yes, I AM alive this morning, although definitely not at "warp speed" capacity) I figured out that something is wrong with the "total balance" function on the website, and/or something went wrong with their update and some more techie souls are scrabbling to fix "what went wrong". They are probably NOT going to have a good day.
As for me...now that I've both billed and blogged for the day, back to bed for a short nap before tackling item #2 on my list....making a business card for my idea-rich, currently dollar poor freelance business.
8/14/03 It's almost midnight, and new blogger that I am, I'll probably stumble-foot around for a bit, banging into a few virtual chairs,toppling over a virtual table or two, or startling napping cyberspace cats. Yesterday (yesterday? only yesterday?) I found brochspot in a circuitous way, while googling for info re: "Ashland", and came across a June blogpost. In a subsequent e-mail, Broch mentioned Bloomington, I immediately assumed "IN" and started waxing poetic about it, while he meant "IL". But even with that sideways start, we proceeded along nicely. And, gracious cyber-fellow that he is, somehow he found himself volunteering to let me participate in this blog-spot! So now I will do my best to "appear", since Broch has already done the hard work of setting up the underpinnings......
Just came from an art event where an etherally slender 6 foot young woman gave a slide show and live demonstration of how she builds her unusual pottery shapes. She's been doing ceramics for 10 years..and she's....22,maybe????? Commitment at such a young age.....As a teen I drew and drew and drew....in classrooms, would draw people's hands, profiles, in art class I'd skip French class so I could stay in the art class for three periods in a row...One day the Vice Principal called me into her office -- I told her I just had to make art. She let me go, and I continued to skip French class.....I'd love to say that I kept up that commitment to art, but instead could not shut my ears to the familiar drill that many of us grew up with... "oh, art's a lovely hobby, but you must do something for a living.
Speaking of "making a living", I'm in transition (yet again) so scrambling to find freelance work in the interim. If I had "followed my dreams" years ago, and committed to an art form (then, it was drawing and painting) how would life had unfolded? Would I have an art-filled life, rather than a life that has art in the nooks and crannies? And a cabinet full of beautiful nature photographs, that few have seen? And will I one day choose to live up to the potential of a song I wrote, that goes...."I choose to be.....devoted to me.....I choose to live....a life that's whole and free". Ah, it's midnight now, Or close enough. Time to post this before I do any more of the maudlin "if only I could of done xyz" kind of speculating. TIme to see "what happens next"...in blog world....me, the blog newbie a bit unsure of the terrain but wanting to take a jaunt anyway.
Let the orchestra of unknown possibilities start tuning!