Head Space

enbiggen v. to grow a small job in your head until it's too overwhelming to deal with; a technique used by master procrastinators to avoid starting tasks

I am highly skilled in enbiggening. One day I left a few pieces of paper on my desk and when I looked the next day I saw this:

The problem with enbiggening is that after avoiding what would have taken minutes for a few weeks, my desk actually looked like that. That picture was taken this morning, along with this one:

My home office is where much of the non-teaching part of running the yoga studio happens. It's where I do my bookkeeping, create flyers and plan workshops. It's also where I write my blog posts, answer emails, schedule my son's homeschooling assignments, write letters and, occasionally, play on Facebook.

When my office gets messy, I don't want to use it. My brain doesn't focus well when surrounded by clutter. I need open space for my head to function at its best. Besides, my laptop wobbles when it's perched on piles of paper.

I've been putting off cleaning it up, because I'd enbiggened the large job into something monumental and I just didn't have three straight days I could block out on my calendar for office cleaning. But my dear friend and life coach, Annie, stopped by the other night and happened to see the office. She immediately put on her life coach hat and said something very profound like "no wonder you aren't getting anything done!" only much more eloquently and life-coachy.

Then she offered to bring me a big basket to hold all the stuff on the top of my desk. I knew I had to tackle the job, even if I didn't have three straight days, to get my head into a better space, and to avoid dying of embarrassment the next time a friend drops in.

This morning I got out of bed (an accomplishment in itself lately) and started in right after breakfast. Thirty minutes later it looked like this:

An hour later it looked like this:

All I had left to deal with was this:

Those papers were filed or put in an organized "to-do" pile in less than thirty minutes. The job I had enbiggened into a three-day fiasco actually took ninety minutes.

That's the way it is with procrastination. There are so many things I put off because I assume the time I have to give them is more than I have. And some of them are fun things I'd really like to do. Like writing blog posts.

This is where I'm writing now:

Better, right?

And here's a picture of my dog in my office, because she was there and looking cute:

The Garage Sale

Image via WikipediaEvery year on Labor Day weekend Schroon Lake's Senior Citizen Club hosts a town-wide garage sale. For twenty dollars you can rent a space on the grass at the town beach, drag all your unwanted stuff there and then see if you can at least make your twenty dollars back. I'm not a big fan of garage sales, but after selling the cabin and emptying our self-storage unit the basement is a bit crowded (i.e., I can't get to the washer and dryer without climbing over things).

The good thing about taking part in a garage sale someone else has organized is that you have a deadline. You can't keep putting off going through all your stuff until you feel like doing it. The bad thing about taking part in a garage sale someone else has organized is that you have a deadline. They aren't going to change the date just because you keep putting off going through all your stuff.

My mom, who is a big fan of getting rid of stuff, whatever the method, and who is also a big-wig committee chair or something of the Senior Citizen Club, rented us a space for the garage sale. She did this sometime in July, I think. Which means I've had weeks to get my stuff together and labeled.

Nobody should be surprised that I didn't start until this week.

My mom says I work better under pressure. I suppose that's true, since working under pressure is better than not working at all, although the quality might improve if it wasn't the eleventh hour.

So here it is, 10:00 pm, the night before the garage sale, and I'm as finished as I'm going to get with garage sale stuff. The house is a disaster because there are piles of things people didn't want to give up but which have not yet found a home. Tomorrow morning we have to put all our stuff into the cars and drag it down to the town beach by 8:00 am (in the rain, if the weather forecast is correct). And I'm tired and cranky.

I am never again selling anything in a garage sale. After tomorrow, I am officially retired from the junk selling business. There is still way too much stuff in our basement but, if it can't get reused or recycled, it's getting donated.

You are probably thinking that, without the looming garage sale deadline, I will never finish emptying the basement. But I have other motivation. I was just given a treadmill and it needs a home before it starts to snow so I can begin my half-ironman training. Which means that I'll be dragging stuff to the Share Shop in December.

Hey, I work better under pressure.