Nobody told my cat about setting the clocks back. He usually likes to wake me up sometime between 4:30 and 5:30, which of course meant 3:30 and 4:30 today (he chose 3:30). I avoided getting up for as long as I could, but after he walked over me about a dozen times and gave me five or six headbutts, I relented. Which means my lazy Sunday started at about 4:30am. Unfortunately, once I’m up, I usually can’t fall back asleep. Because he’s my buddy, I forgive his annoyances. He wasn’t feeling well the other day – wouldn’t eat and couldn’t keep anything down, so I find myself even more accommodating. I suppose I could sleep with the door closed, but the room gets too stuffy, and I think he’d just paw at the door.
I’d love to say that with all of this time this morning I could be extra productive – but lately, I’ve been pretty bad at making good use of my free time. I have a book on the table that’s taunting / shaming me – I stopped reading it when I was back in Memphis. I have dozens of boxes that I need to go through, unpack, and re-pack. I have some pictures I’d like to hang, but have been hesitant to change the place around too much. I also have a few writing / editing gigs (two customer stories and two dating profiles) that have come my way that I’d like to work on and possibly finish today. Yes, I’ve had people hire me to write their dating profiles. It’s an interesting process, getting to know what someone wants and how they’d like to be seen to the outside world.
These past few days, I’ve felt the need to “get things in order.” What that looks like for me is this strange combination of long-range visioning and immediate manipulation of space. The long-range stuff jumps back and forth between house hunting, car shopping, and stock market research. The immediate tasks usually involve chores and trying to figure out what stuff I need and where to put things – yesterday it also involved raking the leaves. Regardless of which thing I seem to focus my efforts on, I run in to roadblocks which is when I usually shift gears. Almost all of it stems from not knowing how long I plan to be in this house. I could make an offer on a house tomorrow if I wanted to. Sometimes, I want to. But then I read articles about how much money people my age should have saved up for retirement, and I start to get very conservative and think I should stay here as long as I can, spend nothing, invest every penny. Of course, I’ll commit to neither of those paths, but think about both – often.
All of these things, I suspect, have something to do with control, freedom, and the desire to build something. There’s a house I’ve been looking at. It’s way more house than what I need. It would be a bit of a project – but it could be one of those stately types of homes. I’d probably hate having to put so much work in to it. It’s older so I’m sure nothing fits and nothing is standard. But right now, for whatever reason, taking an old home and fixing it up appeals to me. Maybe I’ve been over sold on the idea of property as an investment. Then the realist in me steps forward. I had a house before – we didn’t do half the work on it that it needed…. and anyway, I should probably save up in times of economic uncertainty. This is when I lose steam. This is when I talk myself out of everything – which reminds me of a novel, Indecision, published a number of years ago. It was part of an emerging genre of slacker, bro literature – smart hipster types and their first world problems. In it, the main character suffers from paralyzing indecision but is offered a pill that will help him overcome his indecisiveness. That’s about all I can remember from the book – that and that I liked it and it was funny. I’d re-read it, but the book is packed away in the boxes, and I’d probably have to buy a house to justify unpacking the boxes, and the house would probably need some work, and is this really what I should be focused on at the moment? Of course I kid (kinda).
It’s starting to get light out. It’s cold and gray out – a good day to curl up with a book. The cat is sleeping on a stack of pillows on the sofa. Unlike me, he has no problem going back to sleep. No, I’m trying to figure out what to do – right now, next week, and three months from now. I have the Faith No More lyric “Indecision clouds my vision” in my head. I should probably stop here and rearrange the pantry.