Saturday, March 11, 2006

Ten Minute Saturdays: Mr. Clean

It all started with the messy desktop on my laptop. I recently added a new background image from one of the pictures I took at Zuma Beach last week. I couldn't see most of the spectacular beach because of all the orphaned files and unused shortcuts that infested my desktop. It took a good hour, but I finally got rid of most of them.

I can see the ocean now.

That frantic energy spilled over into cleaning up my storage space in my mother's apartment. My old bedroom is where Derek and I store random shit. He has boxes of old insurance manuals and files. I have dozens and dozens of boxes of books, CDs, and hundreds of Grateful Dead bootlegs on cassette tapes that take up a ton of space. I also have all of my paintings in the corner along with a few boxes of clothes, not necessarily old clothes, just the items that missed the cut. I pretty much have a limited wardrobe since I'm on the road more than half of the time. I can only wear what I can fit in my luggage.

I took a good three hours to clean up all that crap. I tossed some old clothes and set aside a bag or two for the church clothing drive. I'm sure there's one out there that would be willing to take a few questionable purchases that I made over the last decade. There's a nice hipster dress shirt than an exgirlfriend bought me which I refused to wear on principle along with a sweatshirt from some seaside resort town that someone gave me as a souvenir. The thought of some poor and freezing immigrant wearing something that I never wore that makes me all warm and fuzzy inside.

I slept until noon today. I crashed around 4am and first woke up at 9am. I went back to sleep before crawling out of bed to do laundry. I printed up my taxes in between cycles and played a poker tournament online. I cashed and made the money. I ended up making the final table (the first final table for me in a very long time) and took 7th out of 468.

I did my taxes last night. I started at Midnight and it took me less than two hours. I used Turbo Tax. I did a few hours of prep work before I left for California and had all my business expenses already itemized. I owe about $4K which is great considering I had a very good year as a freelance writer. I expected to pay double which would have wiped out most of my poker bankroll.

I have about 36 hours until a deadline for a magazine article. I have not written a word and I've been procrastinating. I mean, I willingly wanted to do my taxes before I worked on the assignment. I also did laundry, answered a back log of email for two hours, and cleaned up my storage space getting rid of a ton of trash and old clothes. I'm looking to do "busy" things to justify why I'm putting off the writing assignment for a few more hours. Heck, I'm even wasting time surfing for Swedish lesbian porn and writing this post.

In college, I used to clean my room in my fraternity house before writing a lengthy paper. I didn't want to rush the process so I distracted myself. I did laundry, threw out empty cans of beer and bottles of Jim Beam, and returned random dishes, spoons, and cups to the kitchen. I'd clean out my bong. I'd return all those random phonecalls that I had been blowing off.

My attitude then was that I'd write when I'm ready and I'm not quite there yet. Same still applies today. I'll start the article later tonight and I'll probably finish the first draft by noon on Sunday. That's my goal.

Of course there are four things I wanted to write over the next two days and I'm gonna do all of those before I start the article... which is the only one that has a deadline. I thrive on pressure.

I watched The OC via TiVo yesterday afternoon. What a let down. It sucked big time. We need Seth smoking more pot and more 15 year old sex kittens raising hell in trailer parks.

Recent Writing Music...
1. Widespread Panic
2. Wu-Tang Clan
3. John Coltrane
4. Bob Dylan with The Band
5. Charlie Hunter

No comments:

Post a Comment