Clutter

It's Friday, it's quiet and I'm teetering on the verge of boredom with a million things I could be doing still here and staring me in the face. I should do something constructive; something like work. Believe me, this office alone would take me a whole day to sort out. Therein lies my problem... I see it, I understand this has to be done, I know I'll be happy when it is completed, I get the responsibility of it, but I still stand immobilized against it. Which begs the question; at what age do you grow out of the need to be 'told' to do something?  I keep getting caught up in the conflict between the desire to be pro-active and organized, yet silently reveling in the fact that I am an adult now and officially allowed to 'just say no' and blow it all off for another day.  It's sad, really. That dichotomy of age and reason. I think there's a part of me that is waiting to hear my mom's voice yelling at me to clean up my room.  It's a voice that after 25 years I still haven't got used to not hearing; a voice I should have paid more attention to when I had the chance.

I blame it on my birth order.  As the youngest, I tended to have things done for me, and for a whole lot longer than anyone else.  I know my sisters would agree and quickly jump in about how 'spoiled' I was.  I guess I can't deny it to a large degree, but really, is it my fault?  I had no understanding that this special treatment wasn't normal, that I should object for fear it would completely distort my entire adult life.  Besides, I kinda liked it, and, like any decent child would do, I used it to my full advantage.  But there is a downside to all this that I think sometimes my sisters overlook.  My older sisters were 2 years apart in age whereas I was 4 and 6 years younger respectively, so I was very often alone.  I was always either too little or too fragile to be included, so it was very often just me and mom, and she was always busy with 4 kids to deal with besides living on a farm at the time. The work was constant. Yet children are adaptable, and I learned to create my own fun in my childhood fantasy world and did ok. I would spend hours cleaning up and fixing up an old pig shed to be my beautiful playhouse or fly to distant lands on my beloved swing. (geez, I loved that swing.)   Being quite shy as a child didn't make it easy to make friends, so I was a bit of a loner at school as well,  and with being on a farm, one's neighbours were usually miles away. I was closest to my younger cousin Dan who lived 5 miles down the road in the bustling metropolis that was Hay Lakes, Alberta (pop. 300).  Besides, he didn't do dolls very well, so I had to play trucks in sandboxes a lot!  That, and playing out different good guys/bad guys scenarios in the bushes and out buildings.  There were a lot of places to stay lost on a farm if you chose to.  We'd use that fact to ditch Dan's whiny little brother every chance we got!  Now, as an adult, I still find solace in being alone and frequent that state on a regular basis. Being alone also protects you from being analyzed and criticized for unreached expectations... it's easier not to have to defend yourself except to yourself.  Sounds a little narcissistic, doesn't it.  Probably.  Still, we live in a cynical, cruel world and my skin is unbearably thin.  I'm opting for self preservation.

But, I digress.  The actual point I am trying to make is that by being comfortable in being alone means you live inside your head a lot... which is probably why I like to write.  It's such a solitary process and can eat up huge chunks of a day when you are on a roll and those rolls aren't always easy to achieve.  Nevertheless, you come away from it and recognize that though you have managed to get a couple thousand words on a screen, nothing else around you has changed and you realize, dammit... 

the clutter doesn't disappear by writing it out of your story.

Which means I still have all this stuff, this conundrum, to deal with.  It's the only part that truly disappoints about the whole process.   So, how do I rise to the challenge?  How do I start without stalling?

*sigh* I'll let you know tomorrow.   Bahhaahaaa!