(no subject)

[teaberryblue]

I haven't quite managed to finish the drawing I started today, which is okay, because I certainly got pretty far with it. And it might be the weirdest fanart ever. But that is also okay!

I decided I had some things I wanted to post by the end of the day, and as I've got bed in fifteen minutes, I'd better do that! Then I will have accomplished all my goals for the day!

I had a dream last night about a girl from my high school class. She was never really someone I was friends with, but I never really disliked her, either, although I didn't like some of her friends. Anyway, it was a first-person dream, where my little brother was having a going-away party because he was going to study in some foreign country, and he had invited all his friends, but they all turned him down. I was talking about this in front of this girl, and she said very firmly that that wasn't right, and that if none of his friends were coming, she would come and bring her younger sister and younger brother. IRL, she did have a younger sister, but not a younger brother. It was very sweet of her, I thought. She also dressed in very punky gothy clothes in my dream, which she did not ever do in real life. That's all, it was just odd because this is someone I barely spoke to in high school, let alone out of high school, and I have her friended on facebook but haven't talked to her since we graduated.

Also, I meant to post about this sooner, and then cacophonesque mentioned something about trying to do this for herself, so I am going to try to get on it now. I have been trying to make myself more capable of accomplishing things by setting small day-to-day goals instead of pipe-dreamy big goals that seem hopeless and far off. They are not even small goals that necessarily mean achieving things, they are more setting a sense of order in my life that I can easily live with. For example, since November, I have been cleaning my apartment every Tuesday and then taking the trash out either Tuesday or Wednesday (Thursday morning early is big trash pickup here). It is the first time that I can remember having my apartment, or any living space I've had, cleaned once a week. I am usually hopelessly messy, and my apartment is still cluttered simply by virtue of my having more stuff than places to keep stuff, but it is actually presentably clean. Wow. I have also been setting goals for things like seeing movies, drawing, writing, posting in LJ, and forcing myself to keep to them. When it is only a few small things a day, it is much more manageable, and I have been very pleased to say that I always complete the majority of my goals, if not all of them! It is making me feel very accomplished!

Comments

[abhor.livejournal.com]

Were you more of a clothes all over the place kind of messy, or a dishes in the sink for over a week kind of messy? Because right now I'm the second kind and it's not pretty :P

[cheshire23.livejournal.com]

I can relate. I revert to being both kinds under stress (though I'm usually the clothes type more than the dishes type, and my husband is the reverse, so we tend to do the chores that bug us more).

[zia-narratora.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I think a lot of it is stress-related. The more icky I feel, the less chores get done.

[zia-narratora.livejournal.com]

Like cheshire23, both, to an extent. I am mostly just a very cluttery person, and a lot of that has to do with never feeling like I have "places" for a lot of my things-- I have more clothing than space in my drawers, for example-- combined with just being a bit lazy about things like throwing papers into the trash. Like, if I cut a tag off new clothes, I leave it wherever it falls when I snip it.

But when I am stressed out or depressed, I do tend to turn into the bowls-in-the-sink type-- although it's been bowls in the sink for a month, not just a week. I am embarrassingly squicked by washing dishes. My solution to this is to do a combination of buying disposable dishes (which I hate to use because I feel environmentally guilty) and buying foods that come in containers I can also use as dishes. If my food comes in a little bowl or cup, then I can eat it and throw it out and not worry about my sink!

[cheshire23.livejournal.com]

My solution to the dish thing, though admittedly an imperfect one (it works most of the time but dishes get behind when there's massive stress like we've just had with MIL moving into nursing home + norovirus spread through household + dead car), was sort of the opposite: I bought pretty dishes that I love that were easier to clean than the ones I used to have. Fiestaware rocks my world. Sometime when I have enough shiny-things money around to justify this, I will likewise be upgrading silverware, probably to Oneida's Paul Revere pattern (I pick this one because it is simple and easy to clean as well as being one of the Patterns for Life AND having a kid's design - in fact, my mother bought several sets of the kid version for Alex and she loves them.)

My most embarrassing dish story is that I literally packed half of my dishes still dirty for one move and they were still in boxes eight months later, until the lovely gentleman who is now my husband (and at that time was my boyfriend of about five weeks) decided to open up the scary boxes and deal with them while I was at work - this after finishing up a night shift at a convenience store and driving the about two-hour trip to my place. It's frightening to realize just what a mess I was back then, literally and figuratively.

[zia-narratora.livejournal.com]

My parents used to have the Oneida Paul Revere flatware!

I never did the packing thing, but my brother did that...with MY dishes. We had this weirdly convenient moving thing where he was moving into his new place right when I was leaving mine to go live at the dog rescue, where I really couldn't have much stuff. So I had told him he could keep a lot of my stuff till I needed it back. Six months later, when I was movie back into New York, I went to get my stuff back from him-- stuff he had packed up when he had moved out due to a break-up. And my dishes were all neatly packed away-- and covered with mold. I seriously cried.

[evil-laugher.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the small goals thing is useful. One of mine is to clean the toilet semi-regularly. Mmmm.

[zia-narratora.livejournal.com]

See, "Semi-regularly" never worked as a goal for me. But "Tuesday," does.

[comedychick.livejournal.com]

I got into a bit of this daily goal thing just before I left Malaysia, too. It's definitely a good way to be more productive, I found! I think I also like crossing things off lists :D

[zia-narratora.livejournal.com]

Hahaha, I don't make lists, but I feel happy at the end of the day when I have done all the things I set myself to do!

[novangla.livejournal.com]

I like the small-goals thing.

Which reminds me that whenever I have enough free time, I start to get ideas about starting a system like this so it becomes habit. I'm always inspired by the old house-wives of yore who had a different chore for every day (but Sunday, obvi). Of course, I don't have to churn the butter, but I imagine if I did one little chore regularly on each day, cleaning would be less daunting!

The problem is starting it. But you've set it out there so now I'm going to redouble my efforts.

[zia-narratora.livejournal.com]

Actually, I used to try to do the one little chore a day thing, but that didn't work for me, because I would just be like, ehh, it's only one little chore, it's not so bad if I miss it today. The cleaning everything in one go I have kept up for two solid months now, which is much better than I've ever done before. And honest, my apartment is so tiny that it really only takes me a couple hours.

[kandigurl.livejournal.com]

I keep meaning to do that small goals thing myself, but then I forget to make them. :) I do like that feeling of accomplishment that comes from completing tasks I set, but I don't know that I'm in the right place to start doing it regularly. Maybe someday.

Also, I know what you mean about dreaming of people from high school. It happens to me every so often and I'm always left going, "Huh!"

[zia-narratora.livejournal.com]

I saw a girl with a hula hoop on the subway! It made me think of you.

And yeah, or maybe you just haven't picked the right goals or the right way to structure them. I have tried to set a chore a day for like, ever, but that never worked for me.

[zia-narratora.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

This might sound a little weird, but could you avoid analyzing my dreams in the future? I'm horribly sorry if this sounds rude, but it makes me uncomfortable to have people I don't really know well guessing at problems in my life that, if I have them and haven't mentioned them here, I've deliberately chosen not to discuss.

[fannyanns.livejournal.com]

oh. sorry. of course.

I just had a lot of therapy experience with that and I was trying to be helpful. ("some kind of help is the kind of help that helping all about... some kind of of help is the kind of help... we all can do without!" thanks free to be you and me...)

really sorry.

[zia-narratora.livejournal.com]

Oh, no, believe me, I know I am the one being idiosyncratic about it! And it's partly because that was too accurate but the things it's accurate about are things that I would prefer to deal with outside of journal-land, and not be reminded of here. I mainly post my dreams to entertain people, not because I want to know what they mean. On the other hand, now the problem is that I am intensely curious about what some of my really, really involved dreams I've had in the past might say about my psyche.