Meet the Doldrums

What to do, what to do? I am wandering around the house today, unable to decide what I would like to do, or even what I don’t want to do that needs doing. But I am at a loss. It’s raining, so I decided to give myself permission to start a new book. I tried three and gave up on every one. There isn’t even anything on TV worth watching. And I have to be in the right mood to do nothing.

Anyone who has seen my house knows that virtually everything, inside and out, needs cleaning, decluttering or just putting away. I tried to tackle a particularly dusty task, but lost interest halfway, so now there are just piles of dusty things all over the floor. And sometime during the week, I picked up contact dermatitis from gardening, so now I’m afraid to go near my plants.

There is just this vacuous presence around me, keeping me from being interested in doing anything. Motivation seems to have left for the 4^th of July weekend. But what’s this? In the act of flipping through the dictionary to make sure I was using the word “vacuous” properly, the book fell open to the word “watercolor,” and now I’m thinking of that bag of watercolor supplies, and special, expensive, paper I had for the watercolor classes I’d taken last year. The bag is on a hook in the hall closet, where it’s been hanging ever since my last watercolor class.

Maybe I’ll dig out my supplies and work on my technique. I painted two pieces that were worth framing, so I know it’s not a lost cause to keep going. Who knows? Maybe I’ll crank out another “suitable for framing” piece.

How about that? My old friend, the printed word, just flops down in front of me and solves the doldrums of my day. Well, I’d better get to it. I’m actually looking forward to this project.

Start something, anything - you might finish it

　
I have three writing gigs going, and a house with six bedrooms, of which we use only one. Then there are five rooms downstairs, a laundry room and two big bathrooms. Not to mention the wrap-around porch. Oh, and the whole house is standing by a toothpick.

I know why the house is always in such a state of disarray, because sometimes it’s just too much. My husband helps where he can, but the lion’s share of keeping our lives together falls to me. Sometimes I decide I don’t feel like writing so I go to sort the wash. Then I realize I have nowhere to put all the fresh laundry because I still haven’t weeded out all the clothes that don’t fit or are out of style, because they might fit or come back into style one day. So I give up and decide to dust.

Big mistake. This house creates dust so fast that if I don’t dust every day, which I don’t, it gets out of control. Looking at this overwhelming task, even in just one room, I am immediately defeated and go look for something else to accomplish. I start to think about doing laundry, then remember the previous laundry dilemma and give up on that, too. And the vicious cycle continues.

I end up back at the computer to write, but my muse is nowhere to be found. Then I remember seeing a tweet the day before that said, “Write just one page, one paragraph, one sentence, one word…” So I dust off an old idea and try. It’s slow going. Very slow going. After 20 minutes I’ve written three sentences. They are three good sentences though. Pretty soon I realize that I’ve written that one word, that one sentence, that one paragraph and then some. I’m still not enthused about writing, but I keep going, thinking that now I can stop any time and not feel guilty.

Before I know it I’ve got a good start to my story and decide to keep at it. And I finish. It only needed to be two pages, but those two pages were nowhere to be found the last time I sat down to write. If only I could apply this theory to housecleaning - well, then I’d get no writing done because I’d be cleaning all the time.

So the house is going to stay in disarray. I still get paralyzed by writing sometimes, the way I get paralyzed when trying to figure out where to start the rest of my life, but at least each piece has a defined finish. Which makes it easier to start writing that first word. If only the house would stay clean after I finish, maybe I’d try folding that first t-shirt and then actually find a place to put it.