Murray's Weblog

My Room Shalt be Clean!

Every since I started blogging last August I'd had the desperate hope that one day my life would have order. In many ways my blog has been my way of talking myself through this process, and I actually believe that through December 2003 (when I stopped writing) the goal was fairly successful.

There are many things in my life I want to get in order:

• I want my home to always be clean and orderly. Eventually I want to put more money into decorating it so it doesn't look like a perpetual dorm room.
• I want my body to be in impressive shape, lean and muscular. (I've given up on ever getting a tan. I'm just too white!)
• I want my finances to be tracked to the penny and always current on Quicken.
• I want to structure my work so that I focus efficiently and completely for a good four to six hours a day and then can completely move on to other things.
• I want to be constantly writing, with some long term goals like completing an entire book someday.
• I want to have a steady, consistent strategy toward auditioning and looking for acting work so that career gets on track.
• And I want to date regularly and maybe find a relationship someday.

I think you'll agree all these fall under the category of order or even time management. And for a perpetual procrastinator and slob, these goals become so much more ambitious.

It's easy to fall into the defeatest traps of thinking that either these aspirations are too difficult—that I'm biting off more than I can chew—or that afte 34 years on Planet Earth I'm going to be too set in my ways to change. (The Old Dog As Pupil Theory.)

To that I say there's no point to life if I don't always strive to be better, and the day that ceases is the day I truly become old.

There's credit that needs to be given for the accomplishments of the last month. When I was over in London for work and living in a hotel room, I was proud of the fact that every morning I made my bed, organized my stuff and tidied my room. (I wanted to give housekeeping the impression that not all Americans are slobs. I also think poorly of people who think maids are supposed to replace their mothers in the task of picking up after themselves.)

When I returned home I was rather disguested with my apartment, so I started cleaning and organizing. The most important motivator was that taxes were due in a week, and I had to go trough all my piles to assemble the relevant papers, but additionally I wanted to return to the order that I'd enjoyed living in that hotel room.

A serious week later, the apartment was pretty much spotless. And beyond that, I made it a point of every night tidying up the entire apartment. My roommate freaked out a little bit because in his words, he was used to my being a bit of a slob and now the only things lying around were exclusively his.

For the past several weeks I've held this level of order. Actually, my bedroom is looking a little messy again, but nothing that can't be fixed in an hour. So I think I'm going to rent a movie and put it on the computer while I get everything back in order.

A happy coincidence in all of this, Mom's coming to visit in about a week. Of course she won't believe that the place was this orderly before her arrival, but that's probably good considering I wouldn't want to give her a heart attack.

Actually, I credit some of my inspiration to Mom. Last year I worked pretty hard getting her finances completely set up on Quicken, and to her credit she has become religious about entering in all her finances. That big "organization week" I cleaned my house, I also got everything in and current with Quicken for 2004, but I've slipped and haven't added anything for the past two weeks. Maybe I can report back here maybe on Wednesday that Quicken is back in shape.

Let's be optimistic!

Posted by Admin at May 8, 2004 12:57 PM