3by9

I cleaned my room

Ever since I was a kid I have had a problem with keeping my living area clean. My room was always a mess and anywhere that I planted my ass remained a mess. I would try to clean, but it would be a half-assed effort and it would just look like garbage again a couple days later.

Moving off to college and living on my own the effect of my messiness only became magnified. Without any parental figures around hounding me about cleaning stuff up I lived in a cave of dirty laundry. People just got used to the fact that if you came over to visit it me, things would be more than just a bit disorganized.

I am now 28 and I still have this problem. It is not that I don’t like living in a clean environment with everything put into its proper place, it is just that it takes effort and I could spend that effort sitting on my ass doing nothing. See what I did there? Usually I would convince myself that I have an urgent task that must be completed and then I would go back to cleaning, but if I spent an extra minute or two not leaving a mess then there would be nothing to clean up later.

Such a simple thing and yet I skip over it…for 28 years. It is not my parents fault. They taught me well in how to stay organized. It simply comes down to a lack of effort. For the past two days I have been cleaning up my place. I know most people can clean up their place in a day, but for me I move in slow motion when cleaning so it takes me at least three times as long.

Because I have been cleaning I tell myself that this is how it should always be and I make a horrible promise that I will never allow my place to become a disaster zone again. I tell myself I will do laundry once a week so the clothes don’t pile higher than Mt. Everest and that there is no reason to leave a dish in the sink when you are the only one eating. I have been giving myself this talk for over a decade now and as you tell by reading this entry, it hasn’t worked.

This wouldn’t be a 3by9 entry without me applying this to life now would it? You see, I don’t like to clean so I tell myself there is no reason to do something I don’t like. However, it’s hard for me to enjoy what I do like in a messy environment. My ability to work is magnified tenfold when I have a clean workspace. I feel more motivated to simply do (feel in whatever here) so maybe if I stopped looking at cleaning as an act that prevents me from doing what I want to do I would do it more often.

Maybe if I understood that sometimes you just need to do what you really don’t want to do just so you can finally get around to doing what you do want to do. It’s a simple concept that really is tough to comprehend. There is a deeper message somewhere around here but I can’t seem to find it. Either way, get off your ass and do what needs to be done so you can move on to the fun stuff.