Basket Slips

I put some slips of paper in a basket with some ideas of things to keep me busy when I think I've run out - it's not like I ever do, but sometimes I need something to spur me to the next thing.  I can't seem to get my head together since before Christmas.  I think it's the SAD, I can't make myself do anything until it's getting late.

The slips say things like "clean the kitchen floor" or "frame a picture".  I am just so dulled out in my mind these days.  I wish I was perkier.  Coffee is doing very little to help.

I got a haircut today at Bella Institute over on SE Division.  My stylist was from Paris!  I wonder why she'd come all the way to the humble reaches of Portland?!  She did a great job, her name is Natacha if you need a new look for 2013!

Last night I tried to gather things that I'm going to bring over to my parents' house when they have their garage sale.   I have a spot in the basement, out of view of the photos you've seen, where it's all going.  I hope the sale will happen in a week or two.

I am working on clearing out the room that will become my bedroom.  It is unrecognizable from the way it was about a month ago.  I need to clean and spackle the walls but first I will have to take apart my whole computer setup that I use everyday and move it out of the room.  I've been dreading it and putting it off, but I must work fast in case I get a temp job soon and have to put it off more. 

It's a mug's game

Here's some music while you read:

The lyrics to the song are a lot sadder than I actually feel, but I'm getting weighed down by the seasonal affective nonsense this week.  I can't seem to keep a train of thought going during the day, and I get weirdly more motivated as it gets later at night.  Right now I was going through a pile of Dylan's sketchbooks and other assorted papers to find safe spots to keep them.

I watched a terrible movie today: The Proposal.  Stupid!  I was hoping for more from Betty White, which is why I borrowed it from the library in the first place.  Sometimes I'll watch a dumb-ish movie while I do housework and I can listen to it without missing much if I'm looking away.  I don't like Ryan Reynolds at all or Sandra Bullock, let that be a lesson to me.

The fact that I had to go to the dentist today didn't help anything either.  And I forgot to bring enough bus fare to pay my way back from OHSU, so I had to walk down the hill in the gloom of a Portland evening.  I kept looking down the steep side of the hill that slopes sharply down from the sidewalk - more of a cliff, really - and thinking that a car could careen off the road and hit me and we'd all go over the edge, and I'd be impaled on a leafless tree branch!!

It's time to bring up the sun lamp from the basement, I think.  This S.A.D. is hitting code yellow, where I feel it but I'm not hopeless yet.

Free Will vs. SAD

Thanks everybody who has been reading my silly blog, I really appreciate it.  Thanks also to my new followers.  I hope I'll have more soon, but then I forget to be an official follower of my friends' blogs so I don't really deserve it.

As much as I am loathe to I decided to dive into cataloging all the books I'm donating, I made a nice spreadsheet and it's going faster than I thought it would.  I've got to take pictures of all of them too, can you believe it?  I hope the tax man doesn't want photos someday of all the crap I gave to Goodwill this year, because I sure have a lot of receipts for it.  I am asserting my willpower over my urge to put off the book stuff, because after getting back from California last week I became acutely aware that my good spirits wouldn't last while I am procrastinating.  We've had driving rain for days, whereas when I left for the Bay Area and during my trip there'd been nothing but sunshine.  I'm trying to head off any feelings of depression this season.  I have some problems every winter, but this year I'm going to be aware of them before they happen and use some focus to work through them.  I really want to get my living room ready again to have friends over and it's hardly in that state now.

Here is a piece from a really good DVD zine from some creative folks in Canada, it's called the Winking Circle.  I found it at random at the library!

Watching stuff like this makes me feel a lot better about the world. 

In other news, two of my friends had to follow me down into the basement today so we could get to my garage & drive away.  They could see for themselves that I've been working hard!