Have you ever turned your underwear inside out and worn it a second time? I mean, have you done it since college? (Or in the case of unmarried males, since you turned 50?)
Well, I’m not quite there yet, but it’s getting embarrassingly close. You’d think that being out of work would leave me a lot of free time to get caught up around the house, although those of you who have read my previous confession of procrastination ("How to Avoid Doing Anything") already know better.
The thing is, being unemployed is exhausting. For one thing, people expect you to do extra stuff that they would never otherwise ask of you. After all, “You’re not doing anything.” So chores that might usually fall to the man of the house have become my duties – things like getting the tax information together, paying the bills, taking the car in for repair, doing the yard work, snaking the bathtub drain, etc. Sure, my husband will point out that I always did those things even when I had a job. (Let’s not go there, shall we? I want to keep this marriage intact.) But nowadays, I feel extra guilty about not doing them because after all, I’m unemployed, bringing in no money and I’m not doing anything. So I’m not blaming him. Not today, anyway.
For one thing, I’ve applied for law school. While the chances for my getting in this year are slim to none, I’m optimistic about next year and I’m taking classes at the university, finishing my undergraduate degree, and studying to boost my LSAT score. So that takes a lot of time.
Then there is the community action volunteer work. As a business person, I was active in a number of organizations and I still hold office in some. Just because you are temporarily out of work, doesn’t mean you should remove yourself from your peers in the business community. Some would even advise that those contacts and visibility are more important than ever for future employment. After all, the tooth fairy isn’t going to pay for law school. And there’s my volunteer work with homeless shelters, which has been a part of my life for so many years I can’t even imagine a world without it.
And then there is social media. Social media is like heroin. The more you get “connected” the more relationships you form. And relationships, like marriage, require constant work to stay viable. My drug of choice is LinkedIn. And within LinkedIn, my “family” is Career Insider Network. But two weeks ago, I started seeing another group on the side.
It began innocently enough. Bloggers Helping Bloggers seemed like a good way to connect with other frustrated writers such as myself. But part of being involved with this group required that I read a lot of blogs. They were fascinating and I have learned a bunch of stuff. And because I find it rude to visit a blog and not contribute to the conversation even modestly, I always leave a comment as a footprint to show that I was there. Frankly, it’s gotten out of control. I have been known to wake up in the middle of the night and check my groups to see what’s going on. (Don’t tell my husband. He thinks I’ve developed a bladder problem.)
So now, the house has gone to hell in a handbasket. The laundry is piling up. I still haven’t finished my homework for tomorrow’s class. And while I’m making confessions, it’s after 4:00 and I haven’t eaten yet today. I’ve just been on the computer endlessly. Enough! It’s time to throw down my mouse and go cold turkey. I’m going to get dressed (yes, you heard that right), go downstairs and wash a load of clothes while I make myself a grilled cheese sandwich.
Free. Free at last! Clean underwear for everyone!!!.
(Are we having fun yet?)
Showing posts with label procrastination. Show all posts
Showing posts with label procrastination. Show all posts
Monday, March 12, 2012
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
How to Avoid Doing Anything
OK, I admit it: I’m “stuck.” I’m out of work; I’m depressed; I haven't blogged in nearly two months; I’m not answering people’s emails; I’m not cleaning my house. Frankly, I’m not doing anything. I’m stuck.
I’m not stuck physically, although if I gain any more weight or go another day without mopping my kitchen floor I may just get stuck there as well, unable to move my feet in the grime – much the same way that I am now unable to move my mind.
So, in the interests of continuing to provide good information to my readers (if I still have any readers left after this long period of inactivity), I am going to share my many helpful tricks to avoiding doing practically anything.
It helps that the Olympics are on, because watching all those bobsledders, and skaters, and skiers, and luge sliders is a full time job. And is it just me, or are those German luge guys just plain nuts? I’m happy for their five medals but still…. 95mph with no protection but a helmet? How crazy is that? In any case, as a proud citizen it is my patriotic duty to watch each and every competition, rooting for America. Plus it keeps me from being able to do much else right now.
Of course, if you are not doing anything then it stands to reason that your housekeeping is something less than spiffy. So there’s the problem of hiding things when you have company. Sure, when you’re as depressed as I have been you avoid having company as much as possible, if for no other reason than the general messiness of the house. But sometimes people do show up – maybe to watch the SuperBowl or the Olympics. How can you avoid letting them see how dysfunctional you are right now? The answer: Costco grape boxes! These things are not only free but they are amazing. They are really strong and will take a lot of weight. They run about 23½ inches by 15½ inches and they are technically nearly 5½ inches tall, but you really don’t want to fill them up higher than 5 inches because then it makes them hard to stack. And stacking is the best thing about Costco grape boxes. They have these four tabs that make the boxes interlocking. You can stack these suckers up to the ceiling!
So when someone is coming over and you haven’t the time or the mental capacity to actually go through all of that crap that has accumulated on every single flat surface in your house, you just sweep it into a Costco grape box. My personal system is to keep the surfaces separated so that you can later dig items out of the boxes more easily. The stuff from the dining room table goes in one box; the scraps of paper all over the coffee table into another; the magazines and mail balanced precariously on the chair goes into a different box; junk lying around the floor into another. See!! Brilliant. When I need something, I recall that I’m pretty sure it was somewhere on the dining room table. So you just go to the “Dining Room Table” box and dig thorough that. It actually helps a lot if you label the boxes as you stack them but there’s two problems with that:
1. It requires time and effort and the whole point of sweeping everything into Costco boxes is the elimination of time and effort.
2. The minute you start labeling them, there is a sense of “permanency” to the process. You are admitting to yourself that you’re not really going to immediately “unbox” everything as soon as your guests leave. Even if this is true (and let’s face it, it probably is), admitting it will diminish your self-esteem even further, make you more depressed and cause you to have to lie down….. some more….
So now that you have everything swept away, where do you put the boxes? Well, my current favorite is the garage. That garage will never see a car. My husband and I joke that our whole life is “somewhere in the garage.” Whatever we are looking for – our sunglasses, the 800-number to order a ShamWow, the title to the car, our overall sanity – is “somewhere in the garage.”
I didn’t used to have a garage. When we lived in an apartment in the city there was no storage whatsoever. So you know where I stashed the stacked-up Costco boxes? In the spare bedroom. You just throw a large white tablecloth over the stack, toss a flower arrangement on top and who is to know? Hey, when you live in an apartment you have to make due. I used to know a couple who kept a little studio apartment in Atlantic City. It was so small, that on laundry day, they pulled the tablecloths off of their bed-side tables and voila! One of the bed-tables was a mini washing machine and the other was a little dryer. Seriously. You make due.
Even worse, when I lived in a one-bedroom apartment, hiding the Costco boxes got more difficult. Where did I put them? In the shower in the master bathroom. Of course, that makes it harder to ignore them once the guests go home. But, hey, you make due.
I should mention that occasionally your crap is taller than 5 inches? The answer: The Costco Dulcinea PureHeart seedless watermelon box or the Tuscan-style cantaloupe box. It’s a full 7½ inches tall (for those extra bulky items). And the tabs still fit neatly into the grape box slots for stacking convenience.
I have lots of other tips for avoiding doing anything. You can put off laundry forever as long as you have lots of underwear. You have a choice. You can do the laundry and face all that work (2-4 hours minimum) or the next time you’re in WalMart or Macy’s, just grab another couple of packs of underwear (32 seconds maximum). You do the math.
Of course, these days the obvious way to avoid getting any productive work done is social networking. Between email, participating in LinkedIn discussion groups, Tweeting, making witty remarks on your friends’ FaceBook pages, and answering the DM’s you have received from your many “business friends” across the country….. well, it pretty much consumes the day. And you have to do this stuff because this is the way we do business in 2010. (Or don’t do much business in 2010 – I’m not quite sure.)
I could give you more tips, but all of this blogging is exhausting and now I have to lie down …. some more. Maybe I should double up on my Prozac. But that would require walking up the stairs. Never mind. I think the women’s figure skating long program is starting. I’d like to return a couple of important phone calls, but unfortunately I’ll be stuck lying on the sofa for the next three hours. It’s my patriotic duty.
I’m not stuck physically, although if I gain any more weight or go another day without mopping my kitchen floor I may just get stuck there as well, unable to move my feet in the grime – much the same way that I am now unable to move my mind.
So, in the interests of continuing to provide good information to my readers (if I still have any readers left after this long period of inactivity), I am going to share my many helpful tricks to avoiding doing practically anything.
It helps that the Olympics are on, because watching all those bobsledders, and skaters, and skiers, and luge sliders is a full time job. And is it just me, or are those German luge guys just plain nuts? I’m happy for their five medals but still…. 95mph with no protection but a helmet? How crazy is that? In any case, as a proud citizen it is my patriotic duty to watch each and every competition, rooting for America. Plus it keeps me from being able to do much else right now.
Of course, if you are not doing anything then it stands to reason that your housekeeping is something less than spiffy. So there’s the problem of hiding things when you have company. Sure, when you’re as depressed as I have been you avoid having company as much as possible, if for no other reason than the general messiness of the house. But sometimes people do show up – maybe to watch the SuperBowl or the Olympics. How can you avoid letting them see how dysfunctional you are right now? The answer: Costco grape boxes! These things are not only free but they are amazing. They are really strong and will take a lot of weight. They run about 23½ inches by 15½ inches and they are technically nearly 5½ inches tall, but you really don’t want to fill them up higher than 5 inches because then it makes them hard to stack. And stacking is the best thing about Costco grape boxes. They have these four tabs that make the boxes interlocking. You can stack these suckers up to the ceiling!
So when someone is coming over and you haven’t the time or the mental capacity to actually go through all of that crap that has accumulated on every single flat surface in your house, you just sweep it into a Costco grape box. My personal system is to keep the surfaces separated so that you can later dig items out of the boxes more easily. The stuff from the dining room table goes in one box; the scraps of paper all over the coffee table into another; the magazines and mail balanced precariously on the chair goes into a different box; junk lying around the floor into another. See!! Brilliant. When I need something, I recall that I’m pretty sure it was somewhere on the dining room table. So you just go to the “Dining Room Table” box and dig thorough that. It actually helps a lot if you label the boxes as you stack them but there’s two problems with that:
1. It requires time and effort and the whole point of sweeping everything into Costco boxes is the elimination of time and effort.
2. The minute you start labeling them, there is a sense of “permanency” to the process. You are admitting to yourself that you’re not really going to immediately “unbox” everything as soon as your guests leave. Even if this is true (and let’s face it, it probably is), admitting it will diminish your self-esteem even further, make you more depressed and cause you to have to lie down….. some more….
So now that you have everything swept away, where do you put the boxes? Well, my current favorite is the garage. That garage will never see a car. My husband and I joke that our whole life is “somewhere in the garage.” Whatever we are looking for – our sunglasses, the 800-number to order a ShamWow, the title to the car, our overall sanity – is “somewhere in the garage.”
I didn’t used to have a garage. When we lived in an apartment in the city there was no storage whatsoever. So you know where I stashed the stacked-up Costco boxes? In the spare bedroom. You just throw a large white tablecloth over the stack, toss a flower arrangement on top and who is to know? Hey, when you live in an apartment you have to make due. I used to know a couple who kept a little studio apartment in Atlantic City. It was so small, that on laundry day, they pulled the tablecloths off of their bed-side tables and voila! One of the bed-tables was a mini washing machine and the other was a little dryer. Seriously. You make due.
Even worse, when I lived in a one-bedroom apartment, hiding the Costco boxes got more difficult. Where did I put them? In the shower in the master bathroom. Of course, that makes it harder to ignore them once the guests go home. But, hey, you make due.
I should mention that occasionally your crap is taller than 5 inches? The answer: The Costco Dulcinea PureHeart seedless watermelon box or the Tuscan-style cantaloupe box. It’s a full 7½ inches tall (for those extra bulky items). And the tabs still fit neatly into the grape box slots for stacking convenience.
I have lots of other tips for avoiding doing anything. You can put off laundry forever as long as you have lots of underwear. You have a choice. You can do the laundry and face all that work (2-4 hours minimum) or the next time you’re in WalMart or Macy’s, just grab another couple of packs of underwear (32 seconds maximum). You do the math.
Of course, these days the obvious way to avoid getting any productive work done is social networking. Between email, participating in LinkedIn discussion groups, Tweeting, making witty remarks on your friends’ FaceBook pages, and answering the DM’s you have received from your many “business friends” across the country….. well, it pretty much consumes the day. And you have to do this stuff because this is the way we do business in 2010. (Or don’t do much business in 2010 – I’m not quite sure.)
I could give you more tips, but all of this blogging is exhausting and now I have to lie down …. some more. Maybe I should double up on my Prozac. But that would require walking up the stairs. Never mind. I think the women’s figure skating long program is starting. I’d like to return a couple of important phone calls, but unfortunately I’ll be stuck lying on the sofa for the next three hours. It’s my patriotic duty.
Monday, August 17, 2009
Let's Blame Amy!
Long ago, I owned a film production company and we had a summer intern named Amy Kohn. She was only with us for a few months and she didn’t have much in the way of job responsibilities but Amy was a lovely young lady and we all liked her a lot. After Amy had gone back to college for the fall term, whenever something went wrong around the office, it became a running joke to blame it on some bonehead thing that we pretended Amy had done or forgotten to do or, more often than not, something with which she had never even been involved. It was just a handy way to avoid taking responsibility for anything problematic.
This became such a useful pretext that years later employees who had never even met Amy regularly blamed things on her. It was part joke and part convenient excuse. Paperwork that was long overdue was in a folder labeled “Amy’s file.” A broken drawer had a post-it note stuck to it that said, “Amy, would you PLEASE fix this!!” Sometimes you would only need say, “Amy,” and roll your eyes and everyone understood that someone had screwed up big time but it sure wasn’t going to get hung on anybody present.
Everyone has an Amy in his or her office or life – a scapegoat for whatever is going wrong at the moment. Something for which you just can’t bring yourself to take responsibility. I don’t have a job right now, but it’s not my fault. Between the economic downturn and the cutting of federal funds, they couldn’t pay me so my position was eliminated. See, totally not my fault! I haven’t gotten a new job yet but in this dismal job market that’s not my fault either. In fact, I have several friends who are out of work and dead broke but they are not to blame. I also have a couple of friends who are single and wish that they weren’t but there’s nothing they can do about it. Their inability to get a mate or even a steady date in no way reflects their looks or their self-centeredness or their arrogance or boorish mindset or lack of commitment or (insert your excuse here).
Taking responsibility for your own actions is a bitch.
I’d like to write more about this but I really ought to be plowing through the heap of unironed shirts that are sitting on my dining room chairs. I meant to finish them yesterday but then we took my visiting brother-in-law out to brunch and it was so hot out that we escaped into a movie theater and by the time we got home it was too dark to iron. I mean, am I responsible for the sun going down? Of course not. The sun is up now but it’s getting hot again and, to tell you the truth, I didn’t sleep all that well last night. Also, I’m pretty hungry. I think I’ll wander into the kitchen and make myself a sandwich and then catch a little nap. After all, I gotta eat and get some rest. Who could blame me for that?
“Amy, would you PAH-LEESE get to the ironing?” (head shake and deep sigh here).
This became such a useful pretext that years later employees who had never even met Amy regularly blamed things on her. It was part joke and part convenient excuse. Paperwork that was long overdue was in a folder labeled “Amy’s file.” A broken drawer had a post-it note stuck to it that said, “Amy, would you PLEASE fix this!!” Sometimes you would only need say, “Amy,” and roll your eyes and everyone understood that someone had screwed up big time but it sure wasn’t going to get hung on anybody present.
Everyone has an Amy in his or her office or life – a scapegoat for whatever is going wrong at the moment. Something for which you just can’t bring yourself to take responsibility. I don’t have a job right now, but it’s not my fault. Between the economic downturn and the cutting of federal funds, they couldn’t pay me so my position was eliminated. See, totally not my fault! I haven’t gotten a new job yet but in this dismal job market that’s not my fault either. In fact, I have several friends who are out of work and dead broke but they are not to blame. I also have a couple of friends who are single and wish that they weren’t but there’s nothing they can do about it. Their inability to get a mate or even a steady date in no way reflects their looks or their self-centeredness or their arrogance or boorish mindset or lack of commitment or (insert your excuse here).
Taking responsibility for your own actions is a bitch.
I’d like to write more about this but I really ought to be plowing through the heap of unironed shirts that are sitting on my dining room chairs. I meant to finish them yesterday but then we took my visiting brother-in-law out to brunch and it was so hot out that we escaped into a movie theater and by the time we got home it was too dark to iron. I mean, am I responsible for the sun going down? Of course not. The sun is up now but it’s getting hot again and, to tell you the truth, I didn’t sleep all that well last night. Also, I’m pretty hungry. I think I’ll wander into the kitchen and make myself a sandwich and then catch a little nap. After all, I gotta eat and get some rest. Who could blame me for that?
“Amy, would you PAH-LEESE get to the ironing?” (head shake and deep sigh here).
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