The list never gets shorter.

When I look around, I see oh so many things I need to work on or finish or start or just get done. All these things that need my attention.

The problem more than anything is that these things? They’re all so easy to put off. It’s always easier to put things off than to force yourself to sit down and work on them. Especially when they’re the things that you’re doing for yourself. I have a true abundance of items that need to get done around here.

There is yard work, house projects, paperwork, cleaning the list goes on and on and on.

Yard work alone is just a real mess. I haven’t touched the yard at all over the last few months. Everything is wildly overgrown, there’s a lot to do in the yard. That’s just the outside too, on the inside there’s no shortage of things to do either. Fixing things, plumbing, electric, sheet rock… but before any of that the thing that needs to happen the most is clearing the decks.

One of the things that keeps me from doing a lot is just mess. There’s really no other way to put it, the accumulated clutter is something I avoid and it harms me. It follows me around… all that clutter, all those tasks.

In the back of my mind I keep thinking about the example set by family with older relatives who have passed where things just wind up being tossed. My cousins called 1-800 GOT JUNK when their mother passed away which just struck me as something of a sin. The fact that they left it to strangers really bothered me but it wasn’t my place to really say anything.

I didn’t get anything when my mother passed, I never even saw where she was living or had access as everything happened so suddenly and as it was I hadn’t been able to see her when she moved to the place she had been living at even though I tried repeatedly. When my father passed I did go through everything and it all was a revelation.

Aside from a lot of the things not really being of interest there were things from my grandparents I wanted to hold on to but also what had been revealing was a lot about him as a man and as a person and the majority of it wasn’t at all good. It wasn’t surprising and mainly confirmed what I already knew but then when I think about it now it may have explained a lot of his behavior and outlook on the world.

If you’re a greedy, selfish prick who takes advantage of all the people who care for you of course it’s hard for you to trust anyone because you view everyone else by the yardstick of your own behavior. I’m still mystified how someone could turn out that way while on the flip side my mom who had the most horrible of upbringings could turn out being as good a person as she was. Not that she was someone who didn’t make a lot of mistakes in life but her outlook on the world wasn’t as dark surprisingly.

None of this clutter is going to mean anything to anyone when my time comes so I may as well divest as much of it as I can while I can. The only thing standing in my way is my own laziness… maybe laziness isn’t the right word though.

The truth is that with work I only have so much energy and the reserves are low so when I’m not working? I’m just wasted by the time the day is done.

I can see the end of this project on the horizon and the uncertainty of what comes next has me worried but as the frenzy winds down I probably should be using more of my time to do the things I’ve been putting off, time is so very precious.