Time Wounds All Heels

I've said it before and I'll say it again - time is life. Every second that ticks by is a piece of life. "I'll do it tomorrow," can become a mantra that causes your life to drip slowly away. Now stop for just a few seconds of that life and let that thought sink in. It's water down the drain. Water that never comes back to you. We all take our lives for granted, probably far more often than not. Then there are the other excuses we give to ourselves. We'll say it's not the right time, but we rarely define what the right time is going to be. When we do actually define it, we push it back with another excuse. Obviously it's not something we want to do if we keep finding excuses to get out of doing it.

Quite often there are legitimate obstacles to the things we want. We can respond to those in a few ways. First, we can throw up our hands in defeat. Second, we can flounder and whimper about how we don't know what to do to fix things. Third, we can put off dealing with the obstacle even if we know what to do to get rid of it because we view the task on a level akin to swallowing live bait. Fourth, we can clamp down on our rampant idiocy in the face of resistance and actually do what needs to be done.

I've been meandering back and forth between all of those things in the last few days. Now that I'm finally feeling well enough to write and get some other work done, I've got a lot to catch up on and a life I'd like to get back to. It's not that I'm not getting anything done, but there are some onerous tasks ahead of me that have me cringing like I'm getting feedback at 5,000 dB.

First, I have to clean my apartment, top to bottom. For a non-domestic type like me, that's definitely cringe-worthy. Like many people I like my place to be clean, despite not actually wanting to do any of the cleaning, but my medicated state has induced a distinct lack of repulsion to any messes. Pet food scattered all over the floor because my ferret likes to dig in the food dishes? Check. Dust and hair on the bathroom sink? Check. Cat yak that has dried on the floor? Check. Then I look at the mess and want to cry, or sleep or something 'cuz I don't usually cry over spilled, well, anything.

If it were just those three things it wouldn't be a big deal, but I have boxes I never unpacked from moving in here a year ago. Books that have never been put on shelves, paperwork that was never filed, burned discs that need sorting, dishes to be washed, laundry to do...ah, hell. I'm getting tired just making a damn list. I don't get a lift out of cleaning, unless I'm feeling really hyper from way too much caffeine and mp3s blasting in my ears. It's hard to find the balance with caffeine, though, because just the smallest amount too much and I'm nauseated from it. Back to looking at the mess and wanting to sleep. Instead I turn right back to my computer.

I can think of a million reasons not to clean without even trying. I'll even try to blame it on my ferret who likes to get in the way. He takes serious issue with me removing his dirty potty pads, for one thing. I get the, "I worked on that all week," look. It never fails that he wakes up the instant I start cleaning, too, and suddenly it's the perfect time to play and jump on whatever I'm doing. He's almost a legitimate excuse, really. However, my apartment does actually have doors, and I can either shut him up in my bedroom where he's usually sleeping anyway, or I can shut him out of the bedroom if I happen to be cleaning that. It's more an emotional thing, I think. I hate being separated from him, especially when he starts pawing at the door to get to me and my heart breaks.

Considering my million arguments against cleaning, I'm sure it's easy to consider the possibility that I might not have quite so many reasons to clean. Sure, I need to organize my paperwork so I can do my back taxes, but that's yet another cringe-worthy task I'm not looking forward to, so it's not the greatest impetus in the world. There is a very good reason to get through those levels of resistance, of course. Revenue Canada owes me a whole lot of money. I just have to file the paperwork to get it. It might sound easy, but if you've never done business or corporate taxes you can keep your opinion to yourself. It's not just my income taxes either. I have GST returns to do. Considering we no longer even have GST (Goods and Services Tax), I should probably get those done. Not that the government was actually kind enough to get rid of the tax completely. Instead they mashed it with the provincial tax. It's no lower than it was - it just has a different name. Over the years they did reduce it from 7% to 5%, so it's better than nothing, but then it wasn't that long ago that they introduced the GST in the first place, and it was only supposed to be temporary. Now that our prime minister, Harper, has sunk the country into debt again (and this happened before the global economy tanked), I don't see them getting rid of it any time soon.

Cleaning my apartment and getting organized is going to take a few days, and of course I always push it off until the next day. I'm not being lazy. It's annoyance avoidance. I just don't do the things I hate doing. I do a lot in a day. When I feel like crap because I'm in too much pain or whatever, I'll play computer games or read a lot. When I feel like a normal human being I work almost all the time. Writing, producing, website work, business development tasks and conversations. They're all things that need to be done, but they're not as urgently necessary as the other things.

You see, I could really use the money I've got sitting in government coffers. It's mine, and I want it. I need a new car and a new computer with a really good webcam, along with a passport, and I need traveling funds. Come hell or high water, I'm going on a road trip. I haven't been on vacation in about 6 years, I think. that was my honeymoon with my ex, and it was four days. Before that I hadn't gone on vacation in about ten years. Sixteen years with a 4-day vacation. The computer has become a vital necessity. This 5-year-old laptop has been to hell and back. It's eaten many of the meals I have, as I can often be a bit careless that way. I wouldn't be like that with someone else's stuff, but when it comes to my own things I'm not too worried. They are just things, after all. It's got a lemon for a video processor, though, and I can't do any decent recording with it - something I have to be able to do in order to move ahead on a show project I'm working on for myself. Editing is the extent of its abilities right now.

I tell myself these things, and then that little voice creeps in to say, "One more day won't make a difference." I'm so full of crap when I talk to myself sometimes. Today is another day that I've made no dent in anything around the house, unless of course I did so by running into a wall and didn't notice the damage. Making dents in my computer is not optional. Well, it's been a productive few days, cleaning and taxes notwithstanding. So I'm not going to flagellate myself for one more day. In fact, I actually started a new blog about my experiences with disability, and how I've had to deal with family doctors and specialist. Not to mention all the weird tests I've been subjected to.

Then there are the drugs. I know a lot about pharmaceuticals, and actually have a copy of the Physician's Desk Reference for both drugs and symptoms of conditions. My new blog is called Rain on Pain - I thought it was rather fitting. Don't forget to bookmark it or subscribe to it if you're experiencing any kind of long-term medical condition. This blog you're reading now is as the name suggests - a torrential rain of my thoughts and whatever is going through that pretty little head of mine. Rain on Pain is focused entirely on coping with physical limitations, and helping people to get past them.

Speaking of physical limitations, however - I've reached the end of my tether and need to be dragged off into the arms  of Morpheus. A nice guy to snuggle with, I suppose. After said snuggling is over, I will return once again to the schedule I keep switching on my BlackBerry's calendar.