I wonder how much else I can not get done today?  It’s already early evening (though how could you tell, the quality of the light is so bland, has looked the same since early morning, nothing but grey, not even shadows to make the streets more interesting) and I’ve managed to avoid doing anything of worth, even thinking anything of worth.  In the rather optimistic hopes of being inspired (ha!  what a word for this day) I convinced myself to remove five books from the shelf.  I even convinced myself to open the books.  That’s a good step, right?  I smelled the books (generally helps me get things going), even read bits of them.  I noted a few helpful or interesting quotes.  Then I promptly moved everything but my computer to the other side of the couch, where I have taken up residence, and spent an hour staring over the top of my MacBook at the plants in our front yard.  And the To Let sign on the house opposite, thinking, as I always do when I see To Let signs, that I’d like to put an “i” in the middle of the two words.  And also thinking that it’s been available to let for about as long as I can remember, which is funny, because people seem to be living quite comfortably in it.  We once even saw what could have been nothing less than twenty students pour from its front door one morning, squinting and looking unmistakably hungover (if we’d opened the window we might even have been able to smell the stale remanants of last night’s booze).  Maybe they’re squattors.  But they had that coiffed-hair, popped-collar, Jack Wills-y look, and I don’t think people like that tend to squat.  Just a thought.

Now it’s Simon and Garfunkel again, because that helped last week, but it isn’t helping today, and apparently I’m bound to just work myself up into a small and useless panic about my own lack of productivity this afternoon.  Let the jolts of anxiety followed by bouts of self-pity followed by elated declarations of not caring commence…

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It’s another grey-skied lapsang souchong Thursday.

The Man fixed the electricity problem. I do love men, don’t you?

I’ve got three blog posts to write today. (Yes, I really am sticking to a schedule). I’ve spent the morning doing anything but work. I’m organizing old photos and music. I plan on making lists at some point, lots and lots of lists, but I haven’t even begun thinking about the lists. I’m watching the birds dig around in the wasteland that is our back garden in winter. They’re sending dead leaves and wet twigs everywhere.

My books for next term arrived yesterday. I’m quite excited to read W.G. Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn, but otherwise I’m unimpressed. Beloved I read years and years ago and despised. I hope I was wrong about it, that I was just being a snotty teenager, but as I recall, my general impression was, why does Toni Morrison have to write like this?

I’m digging KCRW this morning. My tea is just the right drinking temperature and I’m bobbing my head around to the Dandy Warhols and Loudon Wainwright, and Michael Franti. Not the most promising way to start a day meant to be rife with accomplishment, but good fun anyway. I’ll check back later.

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• Spend more than a half hour at any time away from my new favorite couch in the lounge
• Clear out the kitchen for the painters tomorrow
• Read Jane Austen
• Read anything
• Write
• Go for a run
• Go for a walk
• Do the dishes
• Fold the laundry
• Look at my to-do list
• Take a long, lazy bath
• Go round to the shop to buy a bottle of wine

Things I have successfully done:

• Listened to the same music over and over again
• Nearly cried over an episode of Gossip Girl
• Thought about how lazy I’m being
• Eaten dinner
• Answered the door once (next-door-neighbors letting us know about a party tomorrow)
• Fallen asleep on the couch at an awkward angle, leaving my neck sore
• Wondered whether or not I’m suffering from a temporary sort of ennui, or at least having a minor existential crisis, as everything just seems to difficult to bother with…
• Wondered whether or not I can be bothered to go upstairs and get into bed or not

…and when I say “tried to do” I mostly mean “thought about doing”.

Oh boy, it’s half term…

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Why is it that when I try to do something “good for myself” (AKA slightly selfish) I end up spending so much time feeling guilty about it that the benefits seem to shrivel up and disappear?

Am continuing to slog through coursework. This is a process that involves buying hot apple cider from the café down the street; doing the crossword; re-reading bits of books I haven’t looked at it in years; considering the contents of my cabinets, over and over again, and occasionally eating some of said contents; purging my closet of those items I do not wear on a fairly regular basis; “visiting” my friend while she does her laundry at the local Laundromat (since she obviously cannot be trusted alone in such a setting?—though to be fair, this is a ritual that has previously involved sitting on the stoop with warm mulled wine); trawling my iPhoto library for “artsy” pictures to put on display; reading other people’s blogs; occasionally glancing at my calendar and getting depressed about all the stuff I ought to be doing; thinking about going for a run but deciding it’s much to cold, and that I’ll do yoga later instead; watching the last few leaves fall from the tree outside my window; making lots of lists; drinking tea when there’s a lull, or a pang of worry, or a chill; sitting in front of my heater; and general daydreaming.

Obviously.

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…some rather delightful photos dredged up from the depths of the (e-fucking-normous) library…

(yes, this really is what I do when times suggest that I strap up (or strap down?) and get some serious work done…)

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