I'm re-listening to Uncertainty at the moment. Why re-listening? Honestly, I thought I would get more out of it this time.

I'm definitely getting more out of it this time.

In the meantime I'm still struggling with the Un-Fucking Project and its inherent difficulties.

One of the later chapters of Uncertainty goes over the inevitable point in a project when the temptation to quit is overwhelming and when the thought of quitting fills you with such relief that you're absolutely convinced you should give up. We all reach this point in a huge creative endeavor at one point or another and it can literally sink us.

Fields developed a test for knowing whether it truly is time to quit or if the sense of relief is from letting go of the creative angst. If it's letting go of angst it means the project isn't the problem, the resistance is the problem.

His very simple test is a visualization. Imagine its two years from now and your project has to come to fruition in all it's glory. You're reaping the benefits and you've accomplished what you wanted to accomplish with this massive outpouring of creative energy. How do you feel? Where do you feel it? Are you happy and contented?

If the answer is happy, contented, thrilled, and you feel it through your entire body, then the temptation to quit isn't because the project is worth quitting. The temptation to quit is instead from what Steven Pressfield calls the Resistance.

The Resistance is a very difficult concept to translate, but I'll do my best. It's actually better to think of the Resistance as an opposite. Take your calling, your creative endeavors, your very mission in life, that "thing you can't not do", and all of the hard work and delayed gratification that goes into every bit of work towards that goal.

The Resistance is the opposite.

The Resistance is what tells you your work is futile. The Resistance is what hides in your fears and tells you you can't possibly make it. The Resistance is what tells you to sacrifice tomorrow for today.

In physics terms, if creative energy is an object in motion, the Resistance is what attempts to make that object be at rest instead, and STAY there. It's ruthless and uses every bit of fear and uncertainty in order to keep us from progressing.

So in light of Fields' test I decided to sit down and run the test on my current projects and goals. Some of them required tweaking (the true goal was not what I first envisioned) but most of them survived this test.

One of the results though truly blew me away.

Sure "have another baby" and "get Chris healthy" and "get the kids back and healthy" ranked really high on the "want it so bad I can taste it scale".

They were nothing compared to "make myself sane and healthy."

Turns out what the Un-Fucking Project is designed to bring about is what I want most desperately in this world. To be in control of my life and my destiny and moreover, myself.

It's also the project I feel the most angst and resistance about, to the point of engaging in multiple levels and forms of avoiding the project including rationalizing, bullshitting myself, and outright avoidance.

I never thought to apply the concept of Resistance to the goal of making myself healthy and sane. But then it makes sense.

What greater creative endeavor do any of us have than creating our own life? What will ever top that act of creation?

Fortunately enough I already own Steven Pressfield's book which covers Resistance, The War of Art.

I've started re-reading the War of Art with a whole new appreciation for its meaning.

I've decided to take up meditation.

This could be a very dangerous idea.

I've decided to take up meditation so I can gain more control over the swirling chaos which is my internal thought process. More specifically, I decided to take up meditation today because the hormonally agitated anxiety started getting to me.

Like most things I started looking for the "perfect" way to meditate. Like most pursuits of perfection, it failed.

Sigh.

Once again, I had forgotten that sometimes the answer is to just do it.

So I tried, with a modicum of success.

Nobody ever warns you about these things. That if you do X, you might unlock Y.

I carry all of my stress and my pain in one part of my body, my uterus. In chakra terms, when my uterus becomes unblocked, all of me becomes unblocked.

I'm a submissive in a long-term 24/7 relationship so I've gotten quite used to not doing my own unblocking. Problem is, the stronger I've become mentally and emotionally, the harder its been to get unblocked.

Grr.

I hoped meditation would help.

It helped a little too much.

Ever have one of those "aha" moments, when you realize just how much of a moron you've been?

Yeah....

So all of this blockage is coming out emotionally and I can see clear as day two things:

1. My primary purpose in life is to create, nurture, and grow.
2. I spend the vast majority of my life erecting roadblocks because I'm afraid of my primary purpose in life.

Fun, huh?

The really awesome part was recognizing that I'd avoided consciously associating the two because of the sheer simplicity of my life purpose.

As far as I thought, I didn't HAVE a life purpose.

Oh, I love to create. Love love love. But I'd always associated life purpose with something more tangible.

"Look at Sister Mary over there. She heard the call. She's dedicating her life to the church."
"Look at Ann. The only thing she's ever wanted to be is a wife and mother."
"I've always wanted to be a policeman."
"I've always wanted to be a doctor."
"I've always wanted to cure cancer."

Oh, look at them. How blessed they are to have a calling. Wonder what I should do?

Dumbass.

call·ingnoun1.the act of a person or thing that calls.2.vocation, profession, or trade: What is your calling?3.a call  or summons: He had a calling to join the church.4.a strong impulse or inclination: She did it in response to aninner calling.5.a convocation: the calling of Congress.Origin: 1200–50; Middle English; see call, -ing¹
Synonyms 2.  mission, province, forte, specialty, field. 

          Calling (Mel's definition): that thing you must do, or else it fucks you up

I love to write. Never felt the calling as a writer, and I can't define myself AS a writer, as I don't wake up every morning thinking how much I need to write. Baker? Same thing. Artisan? Yep.

There is something I wake up thinking about how much I need to, MUST, go do.

Create. Nurture. Grow.

I've wanted another child for a long, long time. Can't do it right now but the pull is strong. I love all babies; human, animals, plants. I love them all.

I feel a compulsion to write when moved. I feel a compulsion to design, to draw, to piece, to photograph, to take rare elements and make something new from them.

So what if my calling is EXTREMELY vague. That just leaves more opportunities to fulfill the need.

..... and more opportunities to fuck it up.

Creation SCARES THE FUCK OUT OF ME.

It's what I must do. It's what I'm here for. It scares the fuck out of me.

Blame my dad if you want, and all of his talk about starving artists. Blame my tendency to rely on the opinions of others. Blame it on whatever. I'm afraid of putting it out there, because whatever I create stays in the world and then people can *gasp* pass judgement on what I've made. And then if they don't like it I'll just die.

It's a flippin' phobia. An evil, useless, detrimental, life-sucking phobia combined with a stupid fucking irrational thought.

And what do we do with phobias we don't want to deal with? Oh, just use everyday responsibilities and stupid excuses to keep away from whatever we're afraid of.

Huh. I guess a messy house might do that. If I've always got something "more important" to do (after all, "real life" is more important than the "luxury" of creation) then naturally I'll never get around to it.

Like I said, dumbass.

So class, how do you fight a phobia?

Exposure therapy.

Yeppers. Time to do some exposure therapy.

So now until I beat the shit out of this phobia I'll need to do two things:

1. Make something every day.
2. Show that something off one way or another.
3. Notice that the criticism does not kill me or otherwise destroy me.

Sound like a plan?

So today's challenge was the master bedroom and bathroom.

How did I do?

Well, like normal my ambitions and expectations far exceeded my actual competence at the moment. To be honest, the expectation that I would finish in one day was a little silly as it was. That I started at 11 am didn't help.

Then, about 2 pm when the time for my second adderall of the day came around, I realized I was in pain. Really bad background pain.

Mel's rule #1: Don't suffer needlessly.
Mel's rule #2: Don't make the week suffer for the day's sake, i.e. don't kill your productivity for the week by killing yourself reaching productivity for the day.

About 4 pm the Midol and ibuprofen finally kicked in. Oh, and the Dr. Pepper and Reese's. Yes, that kind of pain.

So back to the work I went.

I always attack trash and "misfits" first. Misfits are those things that I want to keep, but aren't in their assigned place or even assigned room. Dirty laundry and dishes also fit on that list (unless they're in the laundry room and kitchen, respectively).

Soon the bed was covered with misfits:

Cleaning out under the bed yielded even more trash and misfits.

Dealing with the trash was simple. Out to the truck it went so I could take it to the transfer station in the morning.

The misfits however... many of them don't have a place as of yet, and my organizing areas are already pretty badly backlogged with other stuff waiting re-assignment and final placement. I couldn't very well leave them on the bed, and I couldn't take them somewhere else... so the boxes ended up back against the wall. Grrr.

Now most people wait to vacuum or sweep until the end but I find a clear and clean floor to be much more pleasant and motivating than waiting. So I brought up the Dyson and went to town.

Now, having completed the vacuuming, I had to face the facts; it was too late in the day, and I was too tired, to finish all I had planned.

Grrr.

At times like this when I notice my energy and motivation are on their last legs I make a short little list of what I think I can finish. The list contains three projects: something I can finish in 15 minutes or less that I won't need to touch again, something that will gratify me and fill me with delight in the morning, and something that if I don't finish it will annoy the hell out of me.

The 15 minute project I chose involved making a permanent place for all of the doggie toys I'd discovered while cleaning. Like all 15 minute projects it had a definite set of criteria: must be a permanent solution and must not use or require anything I don't have on hand. For the storage to work it needed to be usable by our smallest dog and be simple and complete.

An old laundry basket I had on hand fit the bill perfectly:

For the gratifying project I chose setting up my vanity. The vanity had similar criteria; easy to do and only involving materials on hand. A folding table and folding chair worked well:

From left to right: makeup brushes, hair items, face cream, hand towel, phone charger, radio/speaker, mirror, internet connection stuff, makeup drawers under table.

As for the last project, I REALLY wanted to at least mostly take care of the bathroom so I wouldn't need to look at it's current state.

At this time Chris called saying he was leaving work. That left me an hour and half to clean the bathroom, clean myself up, and make dinner.

I gave myself 40 minutes for the bathroom, which mostly did the trick:
I'll have to deal with the organization, floor and soap ring in the tub later, but everything else is clean.

That left me 50 minutes to jump in the shower (desperately needed at this point) and make dinner.

Thank God dinner was simple, and only needed half an hour.

I was dressed, made up, and had dinner waiting when he walked through the door.

Only one thing remained: a huge pile of laundry and dishes left on the bed. 15 minutes took care of that:

So current state of bedroom:
Clean floor, very little organization. Ugh.

So what I learned today:

• Stop expecting perfection.
• Stop expecting projects to take half the time they'll actually take.
• Remember that I'm not always at my best.
• Make cleaning easy to pick up again, and organization easy to pick up where you left off.

Shortly before we moved to the Inland Northwest, my best friend had an idea.

Knowing my apparent inability to keep things in the household clean and organized, she suggested that I take pictures once a month of my progress and send them to her.

I did not do that. Irrational beliefs concerning well, a lot of things, kept me from doing so.

However, I must admit she had a point.

So I'm going to take her idea, and make it BIGGER.

Thus, Today's Challenge is born. I will take photos of one area of the house I want to complete clean out, redo, etc and post them.

I will include why it's a challenge, and what I intend to do about the challenge.

Later, I will follow up with my progress and what I learned.

So today we're doing the master bedroom and bathroom:

The issues:

• Two adults with ADHD, one space. Any organizational system must be simple, memorable by both, and extremely visual.
• Too much stuff, too little space, no organization.
• Too many hats; we've used the master bedroom for SO many things, including Chris's office when he was working from home AND a music space. We need to reduce the number of things we use the master bedroom for.
• Odd room design; as you can see the master bedroom is the loft in a chalet style home. The walls are short. The closet is short in height, but extends back to the short wall leaving a bunch of semi-useless space.
• The master bath only has room for one person to get ready at a time. In the morning that can be an issue.
• The useful part of the closet that we can reach (i.e. where the clothes are hanging) is full of clothes and there are more clean clothes to put away.
• My shoe collection is large and haphazard at the moment.
• I don't have anywhere but the bathroom to put on my makeup, there's no room in the bathroom FOR my makeup, and I want to put on my makeup while Chris is getting ready in the morning.
• Chris's "To Read" pile is sky high, as is the pile of magazines he hasn't read yet.
• There is no good established way to deal with dirty laundry.
• The internet connection equipment is stored in the master bedroom for good reason, and cannot be moved to another room.

I am currently fighting through the middle of what could be charitably called a "life transition".