"Watch your thoughts; they become words. Watch your words; they become actions. Watch your actions; they become habits. Watch your habits; they become character. Watch your character; it becomes your destiny." -- unknown

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results - Albert Einstein

Vacation day 1
August 17, 2009 - 7:48 pm

What did I do today? Fuck all.

What should I do:
1) research into window treatments.. blinds. At some point in the next year I'll have new windows and the current blinds won't fit.

2) research into paint. I've said for ages.. I need to paint here. Well, ages being the two years I've lived here. I mean, you can still see the holes where the last owner took down some drapery holding things. As you can tell, such things don't really bother me...

3) write. I don't mean write here, though I will try to do that.. I mean real writing. I mean story writing. I've two ideas -- two very different ideas. I want to do something on at least one of them.

And.. herein lies my real problem. I like ideas. I like concepts. I like abstract conversations. I'm far less good at putting something into action unless and until I hit a point where I simply must.

I'm a big picture guy. I guess. Something like that.

Unless I'm working in Excel craft some sort of auto-calculating spreadsheet and then I'm quite happy to be stupidly mired in detail until my eyes cross and I can't see anything anymore.

I suppose the real trick is both a sense of urgency -- I need to do something.. and it capturing my interest. Both must happen for meaningful action or progress to occur.

Numbers 1 and 2 have a sense of urgency... but I don't know when the windows will be done and I'm really not that interested... so the urgency is too weak to create action.

Number 3 has my interest... but there's no urgency. I can always write something tomorrow or the next day. The ideas are in my head. I can nurse them and tweak them endlessly. I can write and re-write without typo or grammatical error to my hearts content. I don't have to worry about the exact layout.. the coming up with this word or that to describe something -- I simply see it as I want it in my mind's eye.

I did go and look at cats yesterday.. or was it Saturday? I forget. Two very, very different shelters. The first is rather new building.. the rich people's shelter -- though, oddly it seems now, all the cats are kept in little cages. The other, a rather old building, the poor folks shelter, has the cats free in one biggish room. Sort of scary really. Say 40 cats all lounging here or there... and you're the interloper. They let you into the room and you can wander about as you see fit.. and interact as the cats see fit. Lots of shelves and whatnot for them to be sort of high on. Even a flap door to go outside to a fenced in cage.

Quite a few black cats.. but no mostly white ones. I want all the shedding fur to be the same color -- how trivial is that?

I think part of me doesn't want a second cat.. but that's a whole other issue to deal with.

I think.. tomorrow.. I'll go to the casino. I'm not really sure how much money I have free to lose, I need to ponder that. Not much point in going if I decide I don't have the cash to lose, is there? Or not enough to lose to make going worth it.