going through my storage unit again

1:33 PM 12/21/10

Today and yesterday I've been working on sorting through items that were in storage, contaminated things that I have to decide about, decide whether they'll be cleaned off and kept because they're sentimental or important, or thrown away, or given away to Goodwill or someplace.

It was originally my 'current initiative.' I've been trying to start using a 'task diary,' a 'will-do list,' instead of a to-do list. Part of the task diary includes a current initiative. The current initiative is a project that you will work on a little bit every day before you do anything else. It has to be something that moves your life forward, improves your life in the long run.

I really like the current initiatives. All the rest of my daily activities feel more hopeful, and less pointless, if I know that my life is improving.

I have a to-do list already, and I always have. But on that list, I have dozens of big, huge projects that I can't choose from, right alongside mundane everyday activities like 'buy a new light bulb.' It'll be 'learn to play the violin' on one line, 'get a better job' on the next line, and 'check the mail' on another line. There are so many items and I never cross any of them off. That's why I've been reading Mark Forster.

I've been taking St. John's Wort only occasionally, for a day or two, and then quitting. It seems to have long-lasting effects. I remember reading that it actually creates new axons or dendrites, and I don't recall which. Those are the connections between nerves. (Don't take antidepressants while you're pregnant, especially in the early weeks. They severely deform the nerves and brain and skull of the baby, causing things like the skull bone to fuse together too early. In an adult, they change the nerves too, but it doesn't cause such terrible things to happen as it does when you're still developing. When you're developing, those nerve cell changes become a permanent part of your body, and they change everything afterwards that builds on top of them.)

Anyway I am more organized in learning the time management skills shortly after I've taken the drug, and then I gradually go back to being less organized, or at least that seems like how it's going so far. When I need to, I will use the drug again, but I don't like to stay on it. It makes me sleep, and sleep, and sleep.

But what's happened today is that I don't want to do anything else on the list except for my current initiative. I feel desperate, this manic desire to keep working on this one project and nothing else. I'm sorting through my stuff, as I said, and that's been causing agony for almost four years now, totally ruining my life. So it's understandable to feel desperate to hurry up and keep working on it. I'm sure that I'll keep using the task diary again whenever I've finished with this 'desperate' phase. I'm terrified that I'll quit working on it and I won't get it done when I have the chance. Right now I'm underemployed, and I have lots of time. Soon I'll have two jobs again, and I have put out one application, and I'm going to follow up and go talk to them, and then do more applications. So it's going to happen soon, I won't have any free time anymore, and I'll lose the chance to work on this project.

So I haven't done anything else on my list today. I did some things yesterday. I went shopping, and I HATE shopping, so that was a big deal. I got a different light bulb for my bedroom. The people before me, or perhaps the maintenance guys, put in an energy-saver bulb in the ceiling of my bedroom. I hate energy-saver fluorescents. They make my eyesight blurry for hours afterwards, and they make my eyes burn. I call them 'retina-burner' light bulbs. My eyes can't relax if I try reading under those. I pray that the government never makes incandescent bulbs illegal - that's something they've wanted to do for years - they already mandated that all public places are required to use retina-burner bulbs, but I'm not sure which public places are an exception. This is one thing that makes me really, really hate government - when they do something insanely stupid that hurts me personally in a direct, obvious way, and I can't do anything about it. Already, it's hard for me to read books at Barnes & Noble, and I have trouble reading at other places too, like when I tried to read at Dunkin Donuts. I discovered (from having blurry vision) that both of those places are using retina-burner bulbs. They don't have a choice about it.

I'm just glad I don't have a lot of belongings. Imagine if it was a whole huge mansion that got contaminated, and old heirloom items ruined. Instead, it was just a small efficiency apartment full of stuff, and most of my stuff was non-heirloom type stuff - no wooden furniture, nothing old. But I have enough stuff that I haven't been able to sort through it all. I've been at this new apartment for a year and a half now and it's all still in storage.

I will get through it. I am afraid to trust myself to continue working on the time management, but I'm going to keep trying, even after I get a second job.