Busy Backsliding

I have three "lists" of things that I have to get done in a workday: First, there is the stuff in my inbox, which, when I arrive in the morning, is all the stuff that was put there after I left (I leave at 3:30, while others in the office are here as late as 6pm) and all the faxes that have come in from the east coast time zones before I got here. Then there is the stuff on today's task list in Outlook, which is where I schedule reminders for those things that I have to do on a later date – every day there’s a number of previously entered reminders I need to address. And, finally, there is a notepad on my desk, where I make a note of anything that comes up during the day (voice messages to be returned, things others ask me to do, etc.).

Every day, the first thing I have been doing is to write the same things on my notepad: B1 (blog one), B2 (blog two), BOH (Broadening Our Horizons), FB (facebook), and RDR (Google reader). As the day goes along, in addition to all the actual work related stuff I need to see to, I have also tried hard to post to all my blogs, keep up to date on whats in the Reader, update my Facebook status… (you get the idea).

Dee says I’m a writer, but that’s not really true anymore. It's been like 3 or 4 years now since I last bothered looking at a manuscript, and there's only been a couple of dabblings in short stories that all quickly fizzled since then. In truth, the main reason I have tried to post every day isn't that I like to write, but because Dee specifically said she really enjoy reading something new every day that I've written there.

Dee’s retort-post made me realize a bunch of things... among them, I realized she’s right – my posts are pretty much just repetitively bitching about being busy, and this is something that isn't enjoyable to anyone anyways. It’s just me venting. So killing myself trying to post/reader-read/status-update every day is just making my days all the harder and more stressful, and in the end I'm not really doing it for any good reason at all.

Another thing I realized is that, again, Dee was right – trying to do all these things has been an obligation, something else on my to do list that I need to wedge into my day, and not something I have enjoyed. They’ve all been things that added to my misery and business, rather than allowing me to escape from them.

For these past few days, I shut off my email notifier, and didn’t write down any of those things on my notepad. And thus far, I have made great progress in the direction I’ve wanted to go, at least in terms of getting my to do lists back under control.

What’s made me somewhat frustrated about this particular matter, however, is the difference between the two of us. Dee says she really wants to read more things more often (as far as my posts go), and I bust my ass sideways trying to make her happy. And yet, when I’ve said I’d like to read more things more often from her, the reaction (based on action and tone more than words) is essentially… “who gives a shit?” and “stop being an ass and get off my back.”

This is where my backslide begins. Because from there, it’s only a few small, slippery steps (and a bit of stewing in my own annoyance), until I’m telling myself how selfish she’s being, and how she doesn’t actually appreciate or recognize the effort I’ve made, and I start thinking about what I do for her vs. what she does to help me out (and doing so with an unfavorable bias), how she hardly every listens to me (and assuming that’s actually a fact), how little we really have in common (again, with all thoughts slanting negatively)… until I have no interest in even talking to the woman.

It doesn’t help that we’re both stubborn people who both think we have the higher ground, either.

As Dee said, we have ups and downs, just like everyone else.

But it’s still “date night” tonight.