Promises and Plans

I like to think that I am one to keep my promises. Even those that I make to myself. I decided a few weeks ago that I should do Holidailies. And here I am on this blog. (Which hasn't been updated since the end of that last Holidailies.) I thought I might kick off writing a few days before the writing and posting to the portal began. But, no.

I have been suffering great swaths of procrastination. I will tell myself that I will get organized, do some writing, do some cleaning as soon as I (pick one)

• take a nap
• read and discard the pile of newspapers that's built up around my chair
• take a walk
• make some travel and social arrangements
• go out somewhere to eat or listen to music or visit a museum

I make lists. On scraps of paper. And neatly organized on my computer. But. I don't get to everything on them. The key things get done: banking, bill paying, organizing the calendar. Then it's back to the list above.

Fortunately, I have taken care of Christmas. I sent money to my close relatives in Colorado. Crass, but done. My husband and I decided that we would each get a little bedside lamp we saw at the MOMA design store when we were in New York. He wanted a sport coat and picked a perfect one on sale for Black Friday at his favorite store. We are each getting a paper calendar. He already got a three month up one that helps organize his column writing. I'll get a French page-a-day at the local independent bookstore. (As I tear the sheets off, I'll scribble 'to do' lists on the back!) I may get him a surprise. I may get one. Christmas, done and dusted. I have, in the past, bought gifts (actual wrapped and delivered things) for SO many people. Not any longer. Feels good.

Also, while procrastinating about a lot on many fronts, I have, fortunately maybe, organized three of four trips we will take in 2020 as far as planes and hotels. I still have to review all that, put the confirmations in folders and put all the details on the family calendar.

I'm better at getting things done when I make myself a specific promise. Like writing something here every day. And then there are deadlines. Like all the tax deadlines that are looming now that December 1 is here. Time really gets away from me!

Spiraling into the Rabbit Hole

Yesterday, Sunday, had a delicious free quality to it. We had a little social event in the evening and one that didn't elicit a fashion emergency at that. This was the first day in a few weeks where there weren't daytime commitments as well as evening ones. Don't get me wrong...it was all fun or self-improving stuff for the most part. Still I'd been busy. Here was a nice time to maybe catch up on the downsizing or get something tidied up around here. Or just relax and read. So how did I waste my time?

I decided to run virus and spyware scans on one computer and watched them run part of the time. I tried to work The New York Times magazine crossword on the computer and later tried to fill it in in the actual magazine. (No joy until today when I could unlock the key and get help. Clever puns in this one.)

At one point I thought I'd attack a pile of magazines that had survived other attempts to move them toward recycling. I managed to discard a few. In one I just had to read a piece before letting it go. Most of the ones I looked at got saved. A Harper's because of a piece by Jonathan Lethem about plagiarism that was completely plagiarized. (I later read this on the exercise bike but still saved it because I hadn't completely read his notes about where he extracted everything.) I saved a Summer Fiction edition of The New Yorker from 2004 even though I have it on DVD because you never know when it would be handy to take along to read. I saved another Harper's because of an article about Werner Herzog. I saved a June issue of The New York Times magazine not to work the puzzle (which looks quite hard) or to read the serialized novel (I haven't been able to get into any of these and this is chapter five of the last one they did). No, it was a bunch of articles about the rich getting richer and the poor...you know. I'm still trying to figure out which I am much less the whys and wherefores and politics of that economic idea. So...interesting and maybe I should read it.

Then there was The New Yorker issue (too new to be on DVD yet) which had a review of the Edith Piaf movie I missed at the theaters. I saved a Harper's because of an essay on the virtues of idleness. The irony was not lost on me.

I saved another issue of The New Yorker because of an article about the Queen Mary 2. The issue is on the DVD collection. But I'd really like to read it. If I ever get downsized and escape real estate hades, I'd like to go on that ship. I've been on the QE 2. But I digress.

Another issue of The New Yorker survived because of an article about neurosurgery and a Woody Allen casual. And another because of an article about mathematics. So sue me. I must confess that there is a 2005 issue in one of the bathrooms because of an article about Angela Merkel.

So the result of all that activity was that one pile had become two, reduced by three or four magazines that will make the recycling truck on Friday.

During my bout with the magazines, FFP arrived in my office with a 'home for sale' brochure from a house in the neighborhood. We spent a bit of time looking the place up in the database of the local tax collector and calculating a price per square foot.

I sorted through some current newspapers and tossed some ads in recycling. I glanced at Marilyn Vos Savant's column in Parade. She had an interesting puzzle. I didn't try to work it out but when I read the solution I thought it was amazing and wrote a small proof about why it worked. Seriously.

I managed to get to my gym for some exercise (mostly riding the recumbent bike while reading the Jonathan Lethem piece). I thought briefly about a trip to New York, too. Because in New York once, in the Village somewhere, we found a mystery book store while waiting for time for a jazz performance at the Vanguard. And I bought Motherless Brooklyn because it seemed interesting, I wanted to support the store and it was set in Brooklyn. I later bought Fortress of Solitude because I liked Lethem.

Yeah, those were the kinds of "accomplishments" and reveries I managed on this day of little obligation. Oh, and I put together a letter about my great nephew Jack's Flat Stanley's adventures in Austin and ordered and picked up prints of pictures of his (F. Stanley's) visit here and wrote on postcards and put the whole thing (along with Mr. F. Stanley with arms and legs folded) in a package to mail back to Jack's teacher.

I wanted to accomplish things in my retirement. I didn't anticipate how much my adult attention deficit disorder would affect idle times. And my greatest accomplishment seems to be becoming a dilettante. And learning to spell dilettante!

Barely Contained Chaos

I reached back to 2005 to find this shop window picture. Why I randomly stumbled across this on the computer, I don't know. (By the way, I recently discovered that the machine that is Google had magically made photo albums of this blog's photos and my other blog's photos.)

I am constantly trying to organize my life. My stuff. My computer. My files. My head. Get organized, I say. It doesn't happen. Lots of times I start with the little mess in front of my computer monitor (a 17 inch flat panel). Today I sifted through the pile and found:

- two receipts to be logged into my budget spreadsheet (done)
- a Prospectus for a mutual fund that arrived in the mail (dumped in recycling sack)
- an invitation for the dress rehearsal of the next presentation of Austin Lyric Opera (sent two e-mails trying to give it away as we have a conflict and also will see the actual production and that's enough)
- a sticky note reminding me to make a dinner reservation for dinner with an old friend (done)
- a sticky note with a phone number and some notes about a change to my country club's WEB site
- a shopping list for stuff for the event we hosted here Sunday (soda, still water, cocktail napkins, beer, limes, lemons)
- a note about some interest and dividends I'd noticed on my accounts online but not put in my QuickBooks versions of these accounts (done)
- a note about stuff to do for the event on Sunday
- a 'to do' and reminder list with about half the things checked off
- a piece of paper with numbers scribbled down where I was counting chairs for the event on Sunday (we had a play performed and needed chairs for all the guests)
- two business cards for people who came to the event on Sunday...I need to save the cards or info somewhere appropriate...maybe in my Access data base or my 'people' folder...leave on desk until I decide
- yet another scrap of paper with reminders of what to do at the last minute before Sunday's event
- menus from two recent dinners (one at our club where we entertained friends at a wine dinner featuring Australian wines such as a 2004 Massena 11th Hour Shiraz and one entitled 'A Cuban Night' bought at one charity's event and given to promote another charity and including food like grapefruit, snapper, and jicama ceviche and Spanish, Texas and Argentinian wines since, you know, Cuban wine is in short supply) which I consigned to the recycling bin concluding I'd never find them again if I wanted them
- A printout of an e-mail from the playwright whose play was presented here at Sunday night's event showing the guest list as he had figured it with my scribbles and checkoffs. (For the record: I believe four people who RSVPed yes failed to show up and one hopeful maybe did not as well. Three people who did not RSVP or not in time for this e-mail did show up. Which verifies my theory that the no shows generally about equal the surprise shows making the RSVP count more accurate than you might think.) Scribbled on the back of this printout was the food the caterer brought although I need not have done it because FFP went upstairs and printed it out from the e-mail. (The chef forgot to bring the menu cards.) The garlic crostini topped with hazelnut romesco and smoked shrimp were yummy, by the way.

But. I digress. My life is a digression.

Yeah, most of that stuff is now filed away or in the recycling sack that is always close at hand. But to write the last sentence of the previous paragraph I had to go look for an e-mail (because I couldn't read my scribbles on the menu thing) which took me on a digression through deleting e-mail and sent me to look at the WEB site of an actress we met recently and had drinks with the other day when I found an e-mail from FFP about it. (Margaret Turner's site is here.) The event on Sunday brought a lot of interesting people together to watch a play (and eat and drink a bit and talk to one another). People and their relationships to us are part of the chaos that boils around here. As witnessed when I contained that little pile of stuff in front of my monitor. Now...to clean up all the other areas of this office and get totally organized and get rid of some stuff. Yeah. Right.

Before I could finish editing this entry and post it someone dropped by to pick up chairs borrowed for the party. Then the mail came and the UPS guy came. I follow the edict of the organization specialists on mail and such. I immediately try to put the unwanted stuff in the recycling (our city recycles junk mail) and put everything else where it (more or less) belongs. That prospectus got saved from the recycling sack the first time because FFP said he might look at it. But as he left it here, I figured he wasn't really going to do it. Still chaos rules. But I think I'm getting closer and closer to, um, doing better.

Displacing

I guess the things we procrastinate most about in life are the inevitable ones. Death and taxes. A lot of people delay thinking about wills and estate planning. And every year we do anything to avoid pulling together the 1099's, K1's, stock sales, W2's, etc. and placating the IRS.

I get lots done while displacing. I write e-mails to family, respond to requests for trivia for articles people are writing, do laundry, shred ancient receipts, file things and get my budget and accounting stuff up-to-snuff. I play tennis and then figure there is still time to go to the gym for a workout. I see chores around the house I need to do like dumping faded fresh flowers and cleaning the vases.

I even sort through and edit old shop window pictures like this one.

But there it remains on my 'to do' list: taxes.

Finally, you can't avoid it. But yesterday I managed to continue doing so. We had a couple of early receptions to attend. Finally, it was imperative that I get a shower if we were going to be on time for the first one so we could slip out and go to the second one. And then my friend called to see if I could rescue her poodle from the groomer and take her home. Groomer and home are only minutes away so I did that.

No time for taxes. We were home from the receptions by 8:30. But I sort of have a rule that the night is my time to read and watch TV. And do important things like figuring out why my DVR stopped recording Jeopardy and refused to start again. (A boot solved this, of course.)

Today, I am really, really going to work on the taxes. But first I have to reorganize some bulging files in the office so I can find things. And it's almost lunch time. Wouldn't want to go into this activity hungry.