Photo Housekeeping

One of the many overwhelming things about housekeeping is that I'm never sure when it is done. The truth is that it is never done. Knowing this, I feel hopeless and find it very difficult to even begin.

I've tried a couple of tricks to help me create a definite beginning and ending to chores. For instance, I will set a timer for 20 minutes and decide that I will clean for at least 20 minutes. This convinces the hopeless gremlins in my brain to shut up, because I can say, "See, this will be over in 20 minutes. This is not the myth of Sisyphus." Once the gremlins have been appeased, I can usually clean for more than 20 minutes.

Today I discovered a new trick. I took a photograph of my disaster zone kitchen. This allowed me to truly see what I'm dealing with. Since I'm accustomed to messy surroundings, sometimes I can't really perceive how bad they are. "Oh, it's just a mess. I don't even want to think about it." Then, when I do allow myself to see the mess, it's like a kick in the head. I say to myself, "How can you live like this? You are a grown woman. This is disgusting! How can you improve your life if you can't even keep your house in order?" Rather than face those ugly thoughts, I will avoid dealing with housework until it reaches a critical mass.

Photography gives me the objective distance I need to overcome all the emotional stuff that hampers my efforts. Better yet, it gives me an inspiring reference point. When I start to feel run down from the tediousness of cleaning, I can look at the photograph and see that I'm really not done, or see that I've made a lot of progress.

Hopefully, I will be able to take a picture of my rooms when they are clean (I'm not sure how to know when my rooms are really clean). Then I will have another useful reference.

Ugly Snapshots

If you just read my last two blog entries, maybe you'd think my life sucks, and you'd be right. But you would also be wrong. It's true that I do many pleasurable things and have all kinds of deep, beautiful thoughts. But I write about that stuff elsewhere.

Right now, I feel very shitty. And I want to tell someone about it.

My job continues to be some kind of soft hell. I feel absolutely no motivation to do any of my work. None, except some faint mist rising from my distant dissolving work ethic and a vague fear of termination.

I will, out of consideration for my department colleagues, do stuff. Eventually. Perhaps soon. But that is the only good reason I can think of to do my work.

Here's the thing. I like praise. Yes. I'm one of those. And my boss rarely praises me. Nor does she scold me. Other people in other departments have given me more direct positive feedback than my boss has.

I think I'm beginning to understand what's driving things. The people who complain the most are the most powerful in this organization. This is quite stupid. One of these people dislikes me. The other pays very little attention to me. The people who complain the least are the ones who give me compliments, but these people don't seem to have as much power because no one is afraid of them. Another weird thing is that none of these people are in my department.

Weird shit is happening. The soft hell is getting prickly.