Battling Entropy One Room at a Time

Please pray for and give what you can to the people of Haiti. A 7.0 earthquake striking the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere with the epicenter ten miles from the capital cannot be a good thing. All of the reports are sketchy right now mainly because the entire communication infrastructure is down. It is going to be a long night for the people in that country and my heart goes out to them.

Switching gears I have done one of those things that I always seem to do at the start of the year and that is get organized. This year has been more severe than in past years. My apartment just became a complete mess over the holidays as all of the boxes from gifts that I bought online continued to pile up and dishes sat in the sink and clothes were left on the nearest flat surface. It was making me depressed to just look at it.

So over the weekend I went into complete cleaning mode. Went room by room picking up and throwing out and placing items in equal piles. It is one of those moments where my OCD actually comes in handy. When I get focused on organization I really can’t stop and at least with this obsession at the end of the day I am left with a clean apartment albeit one in which the cereal boxes are now in alphabet order. I even finally donated the bags of clothes that had been stored in my guest bathroom. The fact that they stayed there for months and months gives an indication of just how often I have guests over.

What I find interesting is just how liberating it is to just have everything clean and organized for once. For the past few days I have just felt happier knowing that I am coming home to a clean apartment. Every night the dishes are done and the mail is put away and all of those little things that can pile up are simply not piling up. I know that some people strive on chaos and disorder and I’ve certainly lived in that environment for many years but sometimes it is nice just to know that everything is where you want it to be.

It also probably helps that I am working out again. Like I said last week I have to lose weight for the wedding and reduce the size of my gut. I’ll have to admit though that I am not starting off tough at all. I am on Easy mode on EA Active which basically has me going through exercises like “stand up without falling over” and “see if you can walk towards the television without having to stop and catch your breath.” I know that I could push myself harder but after several months of no activity at all I’ve decided to start slow and expand from there. Hopefully this will reduce my risk of injury while building the routine of working out every night. Add in my cleaned up diet and I am starting the year on the right foot. Let’s see what happens from here

7th Best Album of the Decade: Cat Power “You are Free”: Ok, I’m not even sure if I can describe Cat Power. I believe that I have mentioned that when listening to this album you should not operate heavy machinery or be near sharp objects. This album can get really, really dark but it is beautiful nonetheless. I’m not sure if anyone this decade made music quite the way that Chan did but she is well worth a listen.

Dust and boredom

To give a sense of the fun filled, action packed lifestyle that I am currently leading I spent most of the evening cleaning my apartment. And when I say cleaning I mean actually cleaning. This goes beyond vacuuming, something I should do much more often than I actually do. No, tonight I even dusted my coffee table. This is one of those events that happens roughly once a year. I spend a good month looking at the books, realizing there is a nice layer of filth built up upon them and then I spend another month hoping that the cleaning elves will appear and take care of the entire situation. Of course at some point I break down and do it myself. Still better than last night, which featured more laundry than I would care to admit.

I guess that is another one of the strange things about being unemployed; your entire schedule is put out of whack. Now when I worked I would never put this much effort into cleaning on a Monday. I’d be tired from work and would just spend the night crashed out on my couch. By now I’d be already in bed. But since I have nowhere to go tomorrow, lots of things to do but nowhere in particular to do them, I really can spend the night doing whatever it is that I want. Sometimes that means mucho enjoyment for myself. At other times it is a case of working in the evening because I slept in this morning.

Maybe that is as simple an explanation of what my life has been life recently. The events that had been making my life unbelievably interesting (which weren’t discussed much here because doing so would violate the Battling the Current bylaws) have subsided and I am really into job search drudgery. Wake up, spend time online, send out resumes, have the occasional interview and hope to hear positive news. It’s too damn hot to do much of anything outside and since everyone I know is working I don’t have too many people to bum around with during the day. I really shouldn’t complain as I am still getting paid to sit around but I am nearing the point where I need something to happen.

I think that is what has been bothering me the most these past few weeks. My life has really fallen into a state of limbo and it is bugging me to no end. I don’t want to get started on anything big in town (from personal relationships to starting a jigsaw puzzle) because I simply don’t know how long I’ll be here. But I can only stay in that state for so long. I am someone who needs a routine and tasks and goals. Living an open ended life is fun for a little while but right now I need checklists and targets. I at least need to move from a month to month existence. That just bothers me. I already have a hankering to settle down in life; now I’m even farther from that point.

Still, at least I get to celebrate Pi Approximation day tomorrow. That is always fun for me. I’ll feel better after reciting a few thousand digits.