Small Victories

Here's to hoping the tortoise has the right idea

I've always had a mental image of myself as a hyperactive, I-can-do-anything-in-no-time-flat kind o' person. Most people who know me will probably have no trouble whatsoever agreeing with the "hyperactive" part. But I've become rather a slug in the "doing things" part of late. Everything seems to overwhelm me these days, and I seem to have taken as my motto "Why do today what you can put off until tomorrow?"

Not good.

Today I have decided to celebrate the small victories in my quest to Get Things Done. For example, I told my friend Mj earlier this week -- theoretically earlier this week, feels like a million years ago, but that's procrastination for you -- that I would finish work on a web page that I began working on about, oh, two million years ago. Well, today I actually put my nose to the grindstone (ouch) and finished putting that page together.

It took me all of about three minutes to finish up. So now I've accomplished something and my stress level has gone down by some non-trivial amount. (I am somewhat, uh, notorious for being highly stressed all the time, so any lessening of the stresses in my life is a Good Idea®.)

And I've also wanted to figure out what problems I was having using PPP (some damned communications protocol...or something). Usually I connect to spies.com and other hosts via an ISDN line, but when I'm on the road and jonesing to get my e-mail, I want to use the Well's PPP connections. I couldn't get the connect script to work. I finally sat down and installed FreePPP, tweaked the settings, and voila! got PPP to work off my PowerBook. All done. No mess, no fuss, and now when I take a weekend to go somewhere I can post entries in the Paperwork or send e-mail or read the latest from alt.showbiz.gossip.

Likewise, a couple of days ago, since I was back from San Diego and had no more excuses, I finally decided to do something about the conflict/misunderstanding/whatever with my friends down in Los Angeles. I called the one I hadn't talked with yet, A., to find out what she thought about my behavior and the rest of our interactions. My friends are very important to me and if I've hurt them, I want to know. Well, I got A.'s perspective on the whole matter, and I feel like I understand the whole situation a lot more.

Unfortunately I haven't been able to get a hold of my other friend yet, so I still have that loose end, but that's okay; I was pro-active in dealing with the situation, I have a much better idea of where everyone's coming from, my stress level's gone down.

So how come I'm not taking away the obvious lessons from these examples? How come my psyche doesn't assimilate this information and the next time there's some major (or, heck, even minor) problem to deal with, I want to run and hide under the bed and wait until someone tells me it's okay to come out? Why can't I have a major self-actualization breakthrough: "Now I am Active Woman! Able to tackle any type of problem head on and without fear!" Why does the damn boulder keep rolling down the mountain just when the peak is in sight?

For example, Darin and I discussed my schedule for the next month and a half, during which I have to move down to Los Angeles, get oriented at USC, and (oh yes, did I forget?) have a birthday. A non-trivial birthday, the kind of birthday that causes women to cry, lie, and re-evaluate their lives. You know, that birthday. Darin asked me when I was planning to get the apartment.

"Oh, I don't know. Maybe August 15?"

(Pause) "Don't you think that's cutting it a little close?"

I thought about this for a second. Well, I have to

find an apartment
get a phone
get electricity
decide whether I'm going to buy furniture or rent it
find a grocery store
change my Variety subscription address
get oriented at USC

not to mention

figure out how I'm going to deal emotionally when Darin -- my best friend, the love of my life, the emotional center of my existence -- is living 400 miles away.

"Hmmm. I guess you're right. I should probably get the apartment at the beginning of the month."

Which immediately brought up issues of getting back down to LA (drive or fly?), getting around LA (if I fly, I need a car), having somewhere to stay in LA whilst looking for a apartment...all of which had me pulling the crap from under the bed out so that I could crawl under there and hide until it's all over. Like anything's going to get done without me handling it.

(What is amazing is that my blood pressure remains normal to low. My blood pressure has been so low in the past that nurses have taken it twice just to make sure the first reading was correct.)

I just have to remember to make use of the Stickies DA on my PowerBook and make lots of lists of Things To Do. I probably can't do everything all at once, but I can do one or two things a day.

And just as soon as I can figure out how to open the PowerBook when I'm under the bed, everything'll be keen.