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Daily wordcount: 4,752
Total wordcount: 35,920
On/off target: -5,755
I tried to get more written today but I ran out of steam. plus, I have to admit that feeling like I made some headway made me feel lax. There are 5 days left, and I have 15,500 words left to write. That's 2,816 words per day. Not unattainable, but not easy, either. The good news is that three of those days I don't have to work (Thursday, Friday, Saturday) so I have more time to write. The bad news is that I have a lot of things planned for Saturday, so, honestly, if I don't get it done on Friday I'm probably hosed. So let's say that should be 3,520 words a day for the next 4 days? We shall see...
“True, I can’t imagine if you told people who were going hungry to not eat something because it was just there for decoration,” he agreed.
“But then, we have a lot of weird food rule. Comes with having enough to eat, I think,” I said, and we lapsed into silence to ponder the implications of this. And not for the first time, I had to wonder about this demon who was willing to cook with me and have serious philosophical discussions while watching bad horror movies. It was like he was tailor-made to be my friend.
Then again, wouldn’t that be what a demon would do to ingratiate itself with you? Be exactly what you wanted and needed? Sure, he was being nice right now, but that’s no guarantee that would continue. In fact, you’d not be out of line to assume it wouldn’t continue, leopard and spots and all. I did worry that while I was enjoying it, I was slipping into complacency. But it was so hard to not be happy and comfortable. I fingered the pendant I wore around my neck through my shirt. So far, I hadn’t felt like I needed it or that it was doing anything, but why not keep wearing it? Better safe than sorry, right?
“… do tomorrow?” Steve was saying.
I roused myself from my revere and tried to focus my attention again. He’d turned to look at me, but his eyes were flicking back to the giant pile of scraps. The slight annoyance seemed to be back.
“Sorry, I was lost in thought. What about tomorrow?”
“What are you going to do tomorrow?” He asked.
“Ohhh, I have lots of ideas,” I said. “Definitely more work on the embroidery machine, those things take a while to stitch, so I need to have it running if I’m going to get everyone’s ornaments done for the holidays. I think I can fit four designs in one of the bog hoops with still enough room to frame, you don’t need too much extra fabric and I can always go the ‘glue to cardboard backing’ method. And I’ll go through my scrap pile while I’m at it, I can pick out the good embroidery scarps, and I’ve been meaning to iron and cut up the other pieces for quilting. I should make a rule that I’m not allowed to save anything more unless I cut it up properly to begin with, but it’s so hard when you’re in the middle of a project, you know?”
“I’ll take your word for it,” he said. “Were you going to the grocery store?”
“I certainly could, what do you need? Or want?”
“I’ll make you a list, I have a few new recipes I want to try out,” he said, and I saw he had a stack of recipe cards in his hand. They weren’t mine, so I guess he brought them with them from wherever he came from when he showed up at my apartment? Or maybe he could make them appear? I was not sure I wanted to know how much power he had, because then I might start to get a little scared.
“Cool,” I said. “Just leave it on the counter and I’ll run out tomorrow morning. I need to get more coffee creamer, anyway. There is a down side to not going in to work, I have to provide my own coffee and creamer. I think I’ll also go ahead and put up the Christmas tree, I know it’s a little early, but I just want to take advantage of the day off, and I always say I’m going to get it up early enough to enjoy, and then I never do. There’s just not enough hours in the day.”
We lapsed into silence again and watched a truly bad movie about some mutant giant spiders taking over a city. He seemed enthralled, and I picked up my sketch book and started doodling again. The knitting was far enough that it would work, and the doodled design was nearly ready – I just needed to lightly trace the symbol in a blue pencil to make it different. Apparently that was important, otherwise, it wasn’t ‘fair’ to the demon as you could just hide the symbol in a sheet of scribbles. We wouldn’t want to have an unfair advantage over an evil creature from the underworld, now, would we?
There was still the matter of the circle, which I should also address tomorrow. I would have to pull up the area rug and scribe it on the floor below. The problem with that was that if he did happen to look for it, it would be very obvious. And there’d be no hiding that. Maybe that one would wait until I was ready to go. It should only be a few more days and then I’d spend a day doing that before I was ready to banish him. It would be sad, I thought. I almost wished he’d show some sign of evil so I wouldn’t feel so bad about it?
I felt my eyelids starting to droop, and I excused myself to go to bed. I took the sketch pad with me, and spent a few minutes sitting in bed putting the finishing touches on some of the ornament designs before I couldn’t stay awake any longer and gave in to sleep. Right before I did, I pulled the two sketches with the symbols on them out of the book and hid them in a drawer in the nightstand under some clutter. I don’t know what possessed me to do that, and I’m not sure if the feeling I had of someone gently pulling the book from my hand as I slept to look through it was a dream, but when I awoke, slightly groggy, I was profoundly glad I had. Back to the better safe than sorry, to a point there is no harm in being paranoid.
There was, thankfully, just enough creamer left to have two cups of coffee, and I started my day at the crack of dawn and full of caffeine. I had a very busy day ahead of me, if I was going to get as much done as I needed to. First order of business was the trip to the grocery store, a necessary evil that I hated to spend time doing, but I couldn’t see a way around it. At least the grocery list wasn’t too long and I could probably get it taken care of fairly quickly. Then it was on to the cleaning and starting to set the stage.
This is where I run into problems. I’m pretty good at planning on doing things, but often, the motivation escapes me. Without hard deadlines, I have issues staying focused. This is probably one of the big reasons I would never want to own my own business. I’d be doomed to failure without enough self-motivation. The lie of ‘I’ll get to that later’ is too strong to resist. So after procrastinating for a full hour after putting the groceries away, I had to shake myself into action. And not the ‘action’ I wanted to do, which was to write up a list of things to do (how can I be so good at writing to do lists and so bad at following through? That has to be a common thing, I should just go look that up… no, focus!), but to actually start working.
It's always like that when I have time off, though usually worse because I know ahead of time that I’m going to be at home, and I can make grand plans. Have a week off? I vow to spend at least two full days stuck in to organizing my craft room, another two days finish off craft projects, and then a day to clean the rest of the house. Then suddenly it’s Friday and all I’ve done is binge-watched a bunch of YouTube videos and the house is in even worse shape and I start to feel terrible for wasting my time off. I try to tell myself that if I became a total sloth it was because I needed the down time, but that’s just lying to myself. Inertia is my copilot, it’s hard to get myself motivated to do even the easiest things. Like unloading the dishwasher. It takes all of three minutes, is no big deal, but I absolutely hate doing it. And I have no idea why. If I could just make myself start doing things, I would be able to finish them, but that crucial first step is too hard and I don’t manage.
A friend in college had that problem with writing papers. Blank page syndrome or something. So she’d start off her assignment in this manner: ‘This is my stupid English assignment, I’m supposed to write about Willa Cather and the symbolism in her book but I hated it so now I’m going to have to try to make something up about…’ and the complaining would lead to writing and before you knew it, you had a paper. The really important part was to remember to go back and edit the first paragraph or so. That technique does work brilliantly, because once you’re on a roll it’s a lot easier to keep going. I have a hard time finding a way to apply that to things that one, don’t have a deadline with a grade attached and two, aren’t literally on fire. Being an adult is great because no one is in charge of you but yourself, but it’s also a problem that no one is in charge of you but yourself. I do not know how to trick or bully myself into doing the things I know that, logically, I have to do, but don’t want to.
I put on some music in the hopes that it would spur me on to productivity, and it did a bit. I dragged the furniture around and pulled out the tree, getting it set up and the lights strung on it, but the ornaments were all spilling out of the box and there was a tangle of hooks on the floor. The fabric had been half-sorted and some squares cut and pressed, but the place looked even more a mess when Steve made his appearance that evening. This time I was pretty sure I wasn’t imagining the look of irritation on his face, and I definitely felt a surge of anger in response. If he didn’t like it, he didn’t have to be here. Or did he? I thought back to the information I’d read about the whole summoning rituals, and while most of them focused on the facts of what demons could do once summoned, they did also make a point to say that they can’t resist the actual summon. So maybe he’d be happy to go back? Minus the television, which he truly seemed to enjoy. And maybe he really did like cooking? If I wasn’t worried about him escaping and wreaking havoc, or hurting me, I’m not sure I’d really want to send him back at all. And that thought worried me. Just a little.
It was about to get a lot worse, as after dinner I went back to sorting fabric scraps and Steve went over to the tree, untangled the hooks and began putting up the ornaments. And not only did he do a lovely job, but he tidied as he went and when it was done, the corner of the room looked incredible.
“That looks lovely,” I said. “Thank you so much, you didn’t have to do that!”
“I couldn’t sit and look at it like that,” he said. “It was so sad sitting there naked, and the tangled hook were just… too much.”
“I know, I don’t know how to keep them from turning into a bird’s nest, though. There doesn’t seem to be a way to keep them neat, no tricks like there are for the light strands. I think I bit off more than I could chew for the day, that’s me, always under or over planning and ending up in a worse place than I was before.”
“You need a system,” Steve said. “Something to keep you scheduled and on a routine.”
“Are you about to pitch me an MLM?” I asked, only half joking. It really had sounded like a sales pitch, and goodness knows there were enough people trying to sell you on a system that, realistically, does not help with the main problem of being a lazy git. I’m not sure if there was an actual MLM version of one, but if there wasn’t, I would have been surprised. I wondered if there was an MLM about a system to keep you on track of and on top of your MLM? Like MLM inception? Though that would require admitting that working an MLM was anything other than an easy part-time job that just made you fistfuls of cash with no effort. So maybe not.
“No, perish the thought!” He visibly shuddered. I guess some things are even repellant to demons, which really makes you think.
“I always have good intentions,” I said. “And I understand the idea of getting organized, and even staying there. It’s the effort and the motivation that I have a problem with. No amount of systems or planning will help me actually do the things I need to do.”
“That’s the idea of breaking it down into small, not-overwhelming steps,” he said.
“That doesn’t help. I think you underestimate how lazy I am, and how much mess I can comfortably live in. I mean, I admit, my craft supplies are a little out of hand, and that’s why I’m doing this right now. But until it reaches that breaking point, or I have some motivation to do it – I’m not sure I’d be sorting through my scraps if it wasn’t for the embroidery projects, to be honest – I just… don’t. I can try to talk myself into doing it. I can write lists of things to do. But it never does any good. Other things always take priority, even if those things are lounging in front of the television or reading a book.”
He looked at me in disbelief, and I shrugged. I’d tried to explain the scope of my laziness to people before, and they didn’t understand. I kept a minimally acceptable house, it (mostly) didn’t look like a hoarder lived there and I did actually vacuum and dust now and then, but I had the areas of piles and piles of clutter than I just couldn’t seem to shift. And I’m not entirely sure I wanted to. The idea of living in a minimalist house, all sterile and perfectly neat, was not appealing. There was, of course, a middle ground where I could still be surrounded by the supplies and crafts I loved while being able to find my seam ripper, and that’s what I tried to work towards. But I never seemed to make it quite there before I fell back on the ‘little too messy’ side of the line.
“That’s… I refuse to believe there isn’t a system out there that would work for you. You just haven’t found it yet,” Steve said stubbornly. Suddenly I wondered about his motivations. The mess hadn’t seemed to bother him when he first arrived, but now… maybe he was getting paranoid about being sent back. Maybe he’d seen something, and figured that in a pin-neat house, the items needed to send him back would be easier to spot. Maybe I was the one who was paranoid and he just thought that since he was here for the foreseeable future, he’d be happier if it was tidier.
“Fine, maybe after this whole murder thing at work blows over I’ll take another stab at getting organized, but right now I have a lot going on. I need to finish the Christmas presents and get them and cards sent out, there’s dealing with whatever fallout there is going to be at work, and to be honest, the short days are making me want to hibernate and the chances of me getting a lot done are pretty slim. But I’ll try to ride the New Year’s Revolution train and get myself organized starting the first of the year, okay? And you can pick whatever system you think will work for me and I promise to try it. To honestly try it, and give it my best shot. Deal?”
I don’t know if it was the mention of him being there to help in over a month, or just accepting the criticism about my slovenly ways, but he seemed to relax, then brighten.
“Well, I need to figure out a few things about you before I decide what program you need to try,” he said. “There are a lot out there, and while they have similarities, they also have some major differences. But let’s start with format. Book or video? Do you need worksheets?”
“I… either is fine, I suppose. Worksheets are fine, too, but doesn’t that just add to the clutter? I’ve tried a few systems before, there was the FlyLady period that I just prefer not to think about. The sheer number of emails was enough to overwhelm you. That’s the other thing, I need something that’s not geared towards moms, especially stay at home moms. Where’s the working, single lady’s guide to staying organized? Is there such a program? That would be quite the niche market, someone surely has cornered that. I should look that up…” I started to reach for my laptop, and Steve clucked his tongue and shook his head.
“I’m beginning to see the problem,” he said.
“Easily distracted by bright, shiny things,” I agreed. “And that’s the other half of the problem, even if I do manage to start something, I often get sidetracked. And it’s really annoying when that happens very close to the end of a project, and it often does. One year I dedicated a month to trying to finish a project a day, and I actually did it, but I had a lot of small projects/kits. I don’t know if I could do that again. I’d be impressed if I just managed to get all of my unfinished projects into one pile, though that might be depressing when I realized just how many of them there were.”
“So do you need a dramatic overhaul, or would it work better to try to get you on track to doing a little bit every day?”
“Both? I mean, it’s hard to do the small steps when everything is so overwhelming, but when I try to do the big things I get distracted by the little things. Maybe I just need someone to keep me on track? I do well when I have actual deadlines, but short of that I’m not as self-motivating. I still get projects done, just not as quickly or as often.” I drummed my fingers on the arm of the couch. “Like, right now, my brain is feeling super motivated, but at the same time, I’m not sure I could get myself up to do anything. I’m excited about tomorrow, and doing it later, but when the time actually rolls around, it just doesn’t happen.”
“That seems very complicated,” Steve said.
“Yup. That’s why it’s so hard to fix. And to a point I get the idea that having a perfectly ordered, organized life would be a little less stressful, but like in everything, there’s a balance. If you’re so regimented and strict you can’t deviate, well, that will sap the joy out of your life, maybe more so than not being able to find your seam ripper. I like being more laid back, most of the time. I just need a gentle shove to just over that line of neat and tidy, but not minimalist or a slave to the vacuum cleaner. And I need the motivation to stay there. That’s the hard part. I’ve cleaned plenty of times, and gotten things organized, but then it all inevitably falls apart as time goes on and I don’t keep up with it because I’d rather be doing other things.”
“Hmmmm,” Steve said, looking both thoughtful and a little stumped. “That… yeah, I don’t know what to say about that.”
“I know, right?” I said, throwing my hands in the air. “I have a old friend who was convinced that all of her problems were because her house was cluttered and messy. And if she could just take care of that, everything would be peachy keen and she’d be happy. The problem was that, of course, she never did get it organized. At least not in the time I knew her. And that was always her go-to excuse to keep being miserable. I think, in some cases, the messiness is more of a symptom than a cause, and I don’t think mine is a symptom of unhappiness so much as it is a symptom of laziness?”
“Not many people want to admit that.”
“Eh, I think if pushed, a lot of people will. And it’s not that I’m always lazy, obviously I do things, but it’s that maintenance part, the doing a little every day… more of a combination of extreme procrastination coupled with laziness that snowballs into an insurmountable mountain of stress that drives you to the breaking point, at which point you kick butt and get it all taken care of, just so the cycle will start all over again. Fun times!”
“But at least you know your faults, so you can work on them?” Steve said.
“Right, I’ll get on that. Tomorrow.” I winked at him, and he sighed. He sat down on the couch to watch another movie, and I went back to sorting, ironing, and cutting scrap fabric. It was true that once you got me going on a task, I could keep at it for quite some time. But I also had the horrible feeling that I’d get down to the bottom quarter of the scrap box and think ‘that’s good enough, I’ll finish it later’ and ‘later’ would only happen when the box was overflowing again. Oh, how well I did know myself.
I thought it was a little hilarious that there was a demon in my house trying to better me, like some sort of bizarre life coach. Then I thought, well, technically that might be the worst thing to happen to me, because I’d get frustrated and resent it and it was kind of my version of hell, so maybe it did fit? None of it made any sense, and I half-expected to wake up in an asylum at some point, this all having been a psychotic break. Though at what point that would have happened, I wasn’t quite sure. There hadn’t been anything major before the contract issue, but maybe it hadn’t been major. Maybe it had been a small thing. Can you have a psychotic break when you weren’t even feeling very stressed? Maybe I was blocking something out. Or maybe I had been in a terrible accident and this is my brain in a coma? How do we even know what’s real?
I shook myself, the dark swirling thoughts threatening to pull me down into the abyss. I wasn’t good at really deep thoughts, couldn’t handle them. It was too much, and I knew better than to go down that track. That way did lead to a breakdown, I was sure of it. Better to distract myself with the mundane and the here and now. Maybe tomorrow I’d go search out the other occult shop and see what they had to say about it. It couldn’t hurt, and in the meantime, tonight, I’d keep working towards my plan of getting everything set up to send Steve back.
As it turns out, it was overly optimistic to think I would get that far in the scrap basket, I was about half done when I decided to call it for the evening. I sat down on the couch to watch the end of Ice Twisters, a hilariously bad movie that never fails to lift my spirits and must have fallen asleep on the couch in an awkward position, because I woke up the next morning with one of those super-annoying cricks in my neck.
Total wordcount: 35,920
On/off target: -5,755
I tried to get more written today but I ran out of steam. plus, I have to admit that feeling like I made some headway made me feel lax. There are 5 days left, and I have 15,500 words left to write. That's 2,816 words per day. Not unattainable, but not easy, either. The good news is that three of those days I don't have to work (Thursday, Friday, Saturday) so I have more time to write. The bad news is that I have a lot of things planned for Saturday, so, honestly, if I don't get it done on Friday I'm probably hosed. So let's say that should be 3,520 words a day for the next 4 days? We shall see...
“True, I can’t imagine if you told people who were going hungry to not eat something because it was just there for decoration,” he agreed.
“But then, we have a lot of weird food rule. Comes with having enough to eat, I think,” I said, and we lapsed into silence to ponder the implications of this. And not for the first time, I had to wonder about this demon who was willing to cook with me and have serious philosophical discussions while watching bad horror movies. It was like he was tailor-made to be my friend.
Then again, wouldn’t that be what a demon would do to ingratiate itself with you? Be exactly what you wanted and needed? Sure, he was being nice right now, but that’s no guarantee that would continue. In fact, you’d not be out of line to assume it wouldn’t continue, leopard and spots and all. I did worry that while I was enjoying it, I was slipping into complacency. But it was so hard to not be happy and comfortable. I fingered the pendant I wore around my neck through my shirt. So far, I hadn’t felt like I needed it or that it was doing anything, but why not keep wearing it? Better safe than sorry, right?
“… do tomorrow?” Steve was saying.
I roused myself from my revere and tried to focus my attention again. He’d turned to look at me, but his eyes were flicking back to the giant pile of scraps. The slight annoyance seemed to be back.
“Sorry, I was lost in thought. What about tomorrow?”
“What are you going to do tomorrow?” He asked.
“Ohhh, I have lots of ideas,” I said. “Definitely more work on the embroidery machine, those things take a while to stitch, so I need to have it running if I’m going to get everyone’s ornaments done for the holidays. I think I can fit four designs in one of the bog hoops with still enough room to frame, you don’t need too much extra fabric and I can always go the ‘glue to cardboard backing’ method. And I’ll go through my scrap pile while I’m at it, I can pick out the good embroidery scarps, and I’ve been meaning to iron and cut up the other pieces for quilting. I should make a rule that I’m not allowed to save anything more unless I cut it up properly to begin with, but it’s so hard when you’re in the middle of a project, you know?”
“I’ll take your word for it,” he said. “Were you going to the grocery store?”
“I certainly could, what do you need? Or want?”
“I’ll make you a list, I have a few new recipes I want to try out,” he said, and I saw he had a stack of recipe cards in his hand. They weren’t mine, so I guess he brought them with them from wherever he came from when he showed up at my apartment? Or maybe he could make them appear? I was not sure I wanted to know how much power he had, because then I might start to get a little scared.
“Cool,” I said. “Just leave it on the counter and I’ll run out tomorrow morning. I need to get more coffee creamer, anyway. There is a down side to not going in to work, I have to provide my own coffee and creamer. I think I’ll also go ahead and put up the Christmas tree, I know it’s a little early, but I just want to take advantage of the day off, and I always say I’m going to get it up early enough to enjoy, and then I never do. There’s just not enough hours in the day.”
We lapsed into silence again and watched a truly bad movie about some mutant giant spiders taking over a city. He seemed enthralled, and I picked up my sketch book and started doodling again. The knitting was far enough that it would work, and the doodled design was nearly ready – I just needed to lightly trace the symbol in a blue pencil to make it different. Apparently that was important, otherwise, it wasn’t ‘fair’ to the demon as you could just hide the symbol in a sheet of scribbles. We wouldn’t want to have an unfair advantage over an evil creature from the underworld, now, would we?
There was still the matter of the circle, which I should also address tomorrow. I would have to pull up the area rug and scribe it on the floor below. The problem with that was that if he did happen to look for it, it would be very obvious. And there’d be no hiding that. Maybe that one would wait until I was ready to go. It should only be a few more days and then I’d spend a day doing that before I was ready to banish him. It would be sad, I thought. I almost wished he’d show some sign of evil so I wouldn’t feel so bad about it?
I felt my eyelids starting to droop, and I excused myself to go to bed. I took the sketch pad with me, and spent a few minutes sitting in bed putting the finishing touches on some of the ornament designs before I couldn’t stay awake any longer and gave in to sleep. Right before I did, I pulled the two sketches with the symbols on them out of the book and hid them in a drawer in the nightstand under some clutter. I don’t know what possessed me to do that, and I’m not sure if the feeling I had of someone gently pulling the book from my hand as I slept to look through it was a dream, but when I awoke, slightly groggy, I was profoundly glad I had. Back to the better safe than sorry, to a point there is no harm in being paranoid.
There was, thankfully, just enough creamer left to have two cups of coffee, and I started my day at the crack of dawn and full of caffeine. I had a very busy day ahead of me, if I was going to get as much done as I needed to. First order of business was the trip to the grocery store, a necessary evil that I hated to spend time doing, but I couldn’t see a way around it. At least the grocery list wasn’t too long and I could probably get it taken care of fairly quickly. Then it was on to the cleaning and starting to set the stage.
This is where I run into problems. I’m pretty good at planning on doing things, but often, the motivation escapes me. Without hard deadlines, I have issues staying focused. This is probably one of the big reasons I would never want to own my own business. I’d be doomed to failure without enough self-motivation. The lie of ‘I’ll get to that later’ is too strong to resist. So after procrastinating for a full hour after putting the groceries away, I had to shake myself into action. And not the ‘action’ I wanted to do, which was to write up a list of things to do (how can I be so good at writing to do lists and so bad at following through? That has to be a common thing, I should just go look that up… no, focus!), but to actually start working.
It's always like that when I have time off, though usually worse because I know ahead of time that I’m going to be at home, and I can make grand plans. Have a week off? I vow to spend at least two full days stuck in to organizing my craft room, another two days finish off craft projects, and then a day to clean the rest of the house. Then suddenly it’s Friday and all I’ve done is binge-watched a bunch of YouTube videos and the house is in even worse shape and I start to feel terrible for wasting my time off. I try to tell myself that if I became a total sloth it was because I needed the down time, but that’s just lying to myself. Inertia is my copilot, it’s hard to get myself motivated to do even the easiest things. Like unloading the dishwasher. It takes all of three minutes, is no big deal, but I absolutely hate doing it. And I have no idea why. If I could just make myself start doing things, I would be able to finish them, but that crucial first step is too hard and I don’t manage.
A friend in college had that problem with writing papers. Blank page syndrome or something. So she’d start off her assignment in this manner: ‘This is my stupid English assignment, I’m supposed to write about Willa Cather and the symbolism in her book but I hated it so now I’m going to have to try to make something up about…’ and the complaining would lead to writing and before you knew it, you had a paper. The really important part was to remember to go back and edit the first paragraph or so. That technique does work brilliantly, because once you’re on a roll it’s a lot easier to keep going. I have a hard time finding a way to apply that to things that one, don’t have a deadline with a grade attached and two, aren’t literally on fire. Being an adult is great because no one is in charge of you but yourself, but it’s also a problem that no one is in charge of you but yourself. I do not know how to trick or bully myself into doing the things I know that, logically, I have to do, but don’t want to.
I put on some music in the hopes that it would spur me on to productivity, and it did a bit. I dragged the furniture around and pulled out the tree, getting it set up and the lights strung on it, but the ornaments were all spilling out of the box and there was a tangle of hooks on the floor. The fabric had been half-sorted and some squares cut and pressed, but the place looked even more a mess when Steve made his appearance that evening. This time I was pretty sure I wasn’t imagining the look of irritation on his face, and I definitely felt a surge of anger in response. If he didn’t like it, he didn’t have to be here. Or did he? I thought back to the information I’d read about the whole summoning rituals, and while most of them focused on the facts of what demons could do once summoned, they did also make a point to say that they can’t resist the actual summon. So maybe he’d be happy to go back? Minus the television, which he truly seemed to enjoy. And maybe he really did like cooking? If I wasn’t worried about him escaping and wreaking havoc, or hurting me, I’m not sure I’d really want to send him back at all. And that thought worried me. Just a little.
It was about to get a lot worse, as after dinner I went back to sorting fabric scraps and Steve went over to the tree, untangled the hooks and began putting up the ornaments. And not only did he do a lovely job, but he tidied as he went and when it was done, the corner of the room looked incredible.
“That looks lovely,” I said. “Thank you so much, you didn’t have to do that!”
“I couldn’t sit and look at it like that,” he said. “It was so sad sitting there naked, and the tangled hook were just… too much.”
“I know, I don’t know how to keep them from turning into a bird’s nest, though. There doesn’t seem to be a way to keep them neat, no tricks like there are for the light strands. I think I bit off more than I could chew for the day, that’s me, always under or over planning and ending up in a worse place than I was before.”
“You need a system,” Steve said. “Something to keep you scheduled and on a routine.”
“Are you about to pitch me an MLM?” I asked, only half joking. It really had sounded like a sales pitch, and goodness knows there were enough people trying to sell you on a system that, realistically, does not help with the main problem of being a lazy git. I’m not sure if there was an actual MLM version of one, but if there wasn’t, I would have been surprised. I wondered if there was an MLM about a system to keep you on track of and on top of your MLM? Like MLM inception? Though that would require admitting that working an MLM was anything other than an easy part-time job that just made you fistfuls of cash with no effort. So maybe not.
“No, perish the thought!” He visibly shuddered. I guess some things are even repellant to demons, which really makes you think.
“I always have good intentions,” I said. “And I understand the idea of getting organized, and even staying there. It’s the effort and the motivation that I have a problem with. No amount of systems or planning will help me actually do the things I need to do.”
“That’s the idea of breaking it down into small, not-overwhelming steps,” he said.
“That doesn’t help. I think you underestimate how lazy I am, and how much mess I can comfortably live in. I mean, I admit, my craft supplies are a little out of hand, and that’s why I’m doing this right now. But until it reaches that breaking point, or I have some motivation to do it – I’m not sure I’d be sorting through my scraps if it wasn’t for the embroidery projects, to be honest – I just… don’t. I can try to talk myself into doing it. I can write lists of things to do. But it never does any good. Other things always take priority, even if those things are lounging in front of the television or reading a book.”
He looked at me in disbelief, and I shrugged. I’d tried to explain the scope of my laziness to people before, and they didn’t understand. I kept a minimally acceptable house, it (mostly) didn’t look like a hoarder lived there and I did actually vacuum and dust now and then, but I had the areas of piles and piles of clutter than I just couldn’t seem to shift. And I’m not entirely sure I wanted to. The idea of living in a minimalist house, all sterile and perfectly neat, was not appealing. There was, of course, a middle ground where I could still be surrounded by the supplies and crafts I loved while being able to find my seam ripper, and that’s what I tried to work towards. But I never seemed to make it quite there before I fell back on the ‘little too messy’ side of the line.
“That’s… I refuse to believe there isn’t a system out there that would work for you. You just haven’t found it yet,” Steve said stubbornly. Suddenly I wondered about his motivations. The mess hadn’t seemed to bother him when he first arrived, but now… maybe he was getting paranoid about being sent back. Maybe he’d seen something, and figured that in a pin-neat house, the items needed to send him back would be easier to spot. Maybe I was the one who was paranoid and he just thought that since he was here for the foreseeable future, he’d be happier if it was tidier.
“Fine, maybe after this whole murder thing at work blows over I’ll take another stab at getting organized, but right now I have a lot going on. I need to finish the Christmas presents and get them and cards sent out, there’s dealing with whatever fallout there is going to be at work, and to be honest, the short days are making me want to hibernate and the chances of me getting a lot done are pretty slim. But I’ll try to ride the New Year’s Revolution train and get myself organized starting the first of the year, okay? And you can pick whatever system you think will work for me and I promise to try it. To honestly try it, and give it my best shot. Deal?”
I don’t know if it was the mention of him being there to help in over a month, or just accepting the criticism about my slovenly ways, but he seemed to relax, then brighten.
“Well, I need to figure out a few things about you before I decide what program you need to try,” he said. “There are a lot out there, and while they have similarities, they also have some major differences. But let’s start with format. Book or video? Do you need worksheets?”
“I… either is fine, I suppose. Worksheets are fine, too, but doesn’t that just add to the clutter? I’ve tried a few systems before, there was the FlyLady period that I just prefer not to think about. The sheer number of emails was enough to overwhelm you. That’s the other thing, I need something that’s not geared towards moms, especially stay at home moms. Where’s the working, single lady’s guide to staying organized? Is there such a program? That would be quite the niche market, someone surely has cornered that. I should look that up…” I started to reach for my laptop, and Steve clucked his tongue and shook his head.
“I’m beginning to see the problem,” he said.
“Easily distracted by bright, shiny things,” I agreed. “And that’s the other half of the problem, even if I do manage to start something, I often get sidetracked. And it’s really annoying when that happens very close to the end of a project, and it often does. One year I dedicated a month to trying to finish a project a day, and I actually did it, but I had a lot of small projects/kits. I don’t know if I could do that again. I’d be impressed if I just managed to get all of my unfinished projects into one pile, though that might be depressing when I realized just how many of them there were.”
“So do you need a dramatic overhaul, or would it work better to try to get you on track to doing a little bit every day?”
“Both? I mean, it’s hard to do the small steps when everything is so overwhelming, but when I try to do the big things I get distracted by the little things. Maybe I just need someone to keep me on track? I do well when I have actual deadlines, but short of that I’m not as self-motivating. I still get projects done, just not as quickly or as often.” I drummed my fingers on the arm of the couch. “Like, right now, my brain is feeling super motivated, but at the same time, I’m not sure I could get myself up to do anything. I’m excited about tomorrow, and doing it later, but when the time actually rolls around, it just doesn’t happen.”
“That seems very complicated,” Steve said.
“Yup. That’s why it’s so hard to fix. And to a point I get the idea that having a perfectly ordered, organized life would be a little less stressful, but like in everything, there’s a balance. If you’re so regimented and strict you can’t deviate, well, that will sap the joy out of your life, maybe more so than not being able to find your seam ripper. I like being more laid back, most of the time. I just need a gentle shove to just over that line of neat and tidy, but not minimalist or a slave to the vacuum cleaner. And I need the motivation to stay there. That’s the hard part. I’ve cleaned plenty of times, and gotten things organized, but then it all inevitably falls apart as time goes on and I don’t keep up with it because I’d rather be doing other things.”
“Hmmmm,” Steve said, looking both thoughtful and a little stumped. “That… yeah, I don’t know what to say about that.”
“I know, right?” I said, throwing my hands in the air. “I have a old friend who was convinced that all of her problems were because her house was cluttered and messy. And if she could just take care of that, everything would be peachy keen and she’d be happy. The problem was that, of course, she never did get it organized. At least not in the time I knew her. And that was always her go-to excuse to keep being miserable. I think, in some cases, the messiness is more of a symptom than a cause, and I don’t think mine is a symptom of unhappiness so much as it is a symptom of laziness?”
“Not many people want to admit that.”
“Eh, I think if pushed, a lot of people will. And it’s not that I’m always lazy, obviously I do things, but it’s that maintenance part, the doing a little every day… more of a combination of extreme procrastination coupled with laziness that snowballs into an insurmountable mountain of stress that drives you to the breaking point, at which point you kick butt and get it all taken care of, just so the cycle will start all over again. Fun times!”
“But at least you know your faults, so you can work on them?” Steve said.
“Right, I’ll get on that. Tomorrow.” I winked at him, and he sighed. He sat down on the couch to watch another movie, and I went back to sorting, ironing, and cutting scrap fabric. It was true that once you got me going on a task, I could keep at it for quite some time. But I also had the horrible feeling that I’d get down to the bottom quarter of the scrap box and think ‘that’s good enough, I’ll finish it later’ and ‘later’ would only happen when the box was overflowing again. Oh, how well I did know myself.
I thought it was a little hilarious that there was a demon in my house trying to better me, like some sort of bizarre life coach. Then I thought, well, technically that might be the worst thing to happen to me, because I’d get frustrated and resent it and it was kind of my version of hell, so maybe it did fit? None of it made any sense, and I half-expected to wake up in an asylum at some point, this all having been a psychotic break. Though at what point that would have happened, I wasn’t quite sure. There hadn’t been anything major before the contract issue, but maybe it hadn’t been major. Maybe it had been a small thing. Can you have a psychotic break when you weren’t even feeling very stressed? Maybe I was blocking something out. Or maybe I had been in a terrible accident and this is my brain in a coma? How do we even know what’s real?
I shook myself, the dark swirling thoughts threatening to pull me down into the abyss. I wasn’t good at really deep thoughts, couldn’t handle them. It was too much, and I knew better than to go down that track. That way did lead to a breakdown, I was sure of it. Better to distract myself with the mundane and the here and now. Maybe tomorrow I’d go search out the other occult shop and see what they had to say about it. It couldn’t hurt, and in the meantime, tonight, I’d keep working towards my plan of getting everything set up to send Steve back.
As it turns out, it was overly optimistic to think I would get that far in the scrap basket, I was about half done when I decided to call it for the evening. I sat down on the couch to watch the end of Ice Twisters, a hilariously bad movie that never fails to lift my spirits and must have fallen asleep on the couch in an awkward position, because I woke up the next morning with one of those super-annoying cricks in my neck.
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