Self-Disciplinarian

It sucks to have a lack of self-discipline.

The month of August was rough for me. For a variety of reasons, I was under tremendous stress. My response was to do all the bad things I could think of, and do them a lot. I ate a lot of junk food. I drank a lot of alcohol. I played a lot of World of Warcraft (and other videogames). I did not write, did not exercise, and did not do my chores around the house. I gained 9 pounds between the end of July and the end of August. Unsurprisingly, my depression returned with a vengeance. It was a mess.

Fortunately, I knew it was a mess. Unfortunately, I didn’t know how to stop. In the end, I decided to confess my self-destructive behavior to Kris. She wasn’t happy, of course — who can blame her? I wasn’t happy, either — but she listened patiently, and then helped me get my shit together.

And I have managed to get my shit together. It’s shocking, but good. In the past ten days, I’ve stopped eating junk food, stopped drinking alcohol, and deleted World of Warcraft from my computer. I’ve begun exercising again. I’m eating better (still not perfect, but much better than I was). I’m getting my chores done. I’m answering e-mail. And, best of all, I’m writing.

In fact, I’m writing so much that I’m almost a week ahead at Get Rich Slowly. Just two weeks ago, I was scrambling for every post.

I wonder why it is I sometimes lack self-discipline. If I knew, I could fix it. Sometimes this “flaw” makes life fun, but only in the short-term. (Long-term, it almost always makes life worse.)

Anyhow, things are back on course. I’m exercising, writing, and eating right. Now the key is to keep things going!

The Whole Point of Having a Tree

By Any Other Name

Kris and I went to the local Methodist church rummage sale last weekend. I found a 25-cent label maker, a “cartigan sweater”, and a hideous lime green-and-yellow turtleneck. Kris found some treasures of her own.

For some reason, I took my camera, but the only thing I found worthy of photographing was the attendance chart in the children’s Sunday school room. It started with March 6th and ended in late June, but was still on the wall. There was heavy attendance from mid-March to mid-April, but otherwise things were sparse. I wouldn’t call any of the kids “regulars”, either. I don’t think anyone made it even half the time.

But what interested me was the list of names:

Alstin, Zachery, Daniel, Cameron, Devin, Damon, Caprial, Jacob, Aidan, Ellie, Stephen, James, Ryan, Sierra, Spencer, David, Berkeley, Gerome, Adrianna, Lauren, Samantha, Conner, Aaron, Ben, Taylor, Kim, Tiffany, Brandon, DeLancey, and Hannah.

Aside from Alsin an DeLancey, there’s nothing too strange here. Some of the names (Conner, Taylor, Sierra, Berkeley) make me tense, but that’s just personal preference.

Still, this list of names is pretty different from a similar list you might have found 30 years ago, when I was going to Sunday school. The crossover names are: Jacob, Stephen, James, Ryan, Spencer, David, Lauren, Aaron, Ben, Kim, Tiffany, and Brandon.

What I find interesting is that it’s the boys’ names that are most likely to stay the same from generation to generation. I’ve noticed this in the past. When looking at a list of popular baby names by decade, you’ll find that the girls’ names are much more changeable. There’s fluctuation among the boys, to be sure, but the girls’ names, especially after 1910, are subject to all sorts of whims and fancies.

Behind the Scenes at Pok Pok

Every evening it’s a struggle to keep from heading north to Pok Pok. I love Ike’s Vietnamese fish-sauce wings with a tamarind whiskey sour. Yum.

Amy Jo forwarded this short video of Pok Pok’s owner Andy Ricker describing his inspiration for the restaurant:

Now The Oregonian reports that Ricker plans to open Ping, a Chinese restaurant in Portland’s Chinatown. You can bet I’ll be looking forward to sampling the menu!

My Wife Is Sometimes Wrong

Toto vomited on the bed again today. She does this all the time.

It’s not so bad if we discover the hairball midday, but it’s kind of a pain if we don’t notice it until we’re ready for bed. This time was sort of in between. Kris happened to wander into the bedroom just after dinner, and from her loud cursing, I could tell what had happened.

Sometimes Toto manages to get the outermost layer of bedclothes, which is fine. But often — like tonight — she pukes all over the fitted sheet.

“Can you help me take the covers off?” Kris hollered down to me. I was writing at the kitchen table.

“In a few minutes,” I called back. “I’m in the middle of something.” I had spent all day trying to craft a rare personal-finance article about credit cards. I couldn’t find the right tone. I was frustrated.

I continued to write while Kris watched the Republican National Convention. Half an hour later, she came downstairs.

“Do you need help with the bed?” I asked.

“It’s too late,” she muttered. “I’ve already done it.” Out of the corner of my eye, I could see she was carrying something in her arms. Oops.

Later, when it was time for bed, I went to the laundry room to fetch the sheet. It was dark, but I didn’t bother to turn on the light. The sheet was easy to spot amidst the socks and t-shirts. I also found a pillowcase. “Toto must have vomited on that, too,” I thought.

“Just one sheet and one pillowcase?” I asked Kris just to be certain.

“Yes,” she said. I went upstairs to make the bed.

When I got there, however, I noticed that both of my pillowcases were missing. (I sleep with two pillows, and have done so for most of my life: one for my head and one for my side.) I sighed and walked back to the laundry room to fetch the other one. I couldn’t complain, of course. If I’d helped Kris in the first place, I would have known how many pillowcases were in the dryer.

We made the bed. Kris fed the cats their bedtime treats. (Each cat gets three “greenies”, a sort of organic treat they love. Then they’re kicked out of the bedroom. Except on Cat Night. Cat Night occurs once or twice a week, and is a cause for much feline celebration. On that night, they’re allowed to sleep in the bedroom. Of course, during the summer it’s rare that all four cats are even ever in the house at the same time, even over night. Tonight, for example, Simon is outside and refuses to come when called.)

The bed made and the cats indulged, I went to my office to write.

“Aren’t you coming to bed?” Kris asked.

“I’m not done with tomorrow’s post,” I said. And I’m not. I can’t find the right tone, and I’m not sure if I should list specific credit cards. Hell — I’m not even sure I should cover credit cards at all. I’ve given them a wide berth so far.

“Oh,” Kris said sadly. Then she said, “Where’s my pillowcase?”

“What?” I asked.

“Where’s my pillowcase?” she said.

I got up from my desk and walked to the bedroom to gave her my best look of incredulity. Then I said, “When I asked you if there was just one sheet and one pillowcase, you told me yes.”

“I know,” she said.

“But then I came up here and I put that one pillowcase on my pillow, and I realized that you were wrong. My other pillow needed a pillowcase, too. So I walked back downstairs to fetch it.”

Kris realized what I was getting at. She started to laugh. I continued my lament: “And now you tell me there were actually three pillowcases in the laundry?” I let out a long, dramatic sigh and trudged downstairs.

“See how it is to live with you?” Kris called behind me as she continued to laugh. I confess that I laughed a little, too. Our roles in this sort of situation are usually reversed.

Now if only Kris could see how it is to live with her.

Disclaimer: I love my wife, and would not share these stories if I didn’t think they were fun.

The Promise of Winter

The past two days have been strongly autumnal. The high temperatures have been in the low sixties, even though the sun has shone lazily through light clouds. The nights are almost cold. The lawn has begun to turn green again, a month earlier than I’d expect it to do so.

This evening, I worked in the yard. I wore a sweater as I pruned the trees. In the air, I could smell a nearby fire, but not a barbeque fire — a fire in a chimney for warmth. I could have sworn it was late October or early November, except that the leaves were still green (and the berries and tomatoes were still on the vine).

And just now, it’s 8:15. The sky has gone dark. Night is closing in, and with it comes the promise of winter.

One Small Step for a Man…

Last night, I made what may be an important move in my attempt to get my electronic life under control. I separated my work e-mail from my personal e-mail.

I’ve complained for months that I’m overwhelmed by my e-mail load. I’m also overwhelmed by my browser tabs and my text documents. Things are out of control. I’ve been paying Michael and Lisa to help me at Get Rich Slowly, but I’ve done a poor job of giving them assignments because I’m buried by all the stuff. I don’t know what they should be doing!

Worse, I’ve turned into a terrible correspondent with my friends. It’s one thing to be slow with my GRS e-mail, but it’s a shame when messages from Dave or Andrew or you get lost in the swamp that is my inbox.

So, in an effort to take control, I’ve told my desktop computer to stop checking foldedspace e-mail. I’ve told my laptop to only check foldedspace e-mail. What’s more, after two years of having a zillion open browser tabs, the laptop now has none. The browser is in its default state, ready for me to poke around. If I use it for work, I’ll try to work on one task at a time, and try to finish that task before moving on.

I don’t have all the text documents closed on the laptop yet, but I think I can get there over the weekend. I may just zip them up and e-mail them to the work machine. What’s another ten text documents when I already have nearly 100 open?

Anyhow, what I’m trying to say is: I’ve begun to compartmentalize my work life and my social life. I’m hoping this leads to a revitalization of the latter. Work has been my whole life for too long…

Building Great Sentences

This is how geeky I am (as if you all needed another example).

For years, I’ve bemoaned the fact that I’ve been unable to find a good college-level grammar class to take. All of the college-level grammar classes around here are remedial. I don’t want a remedial grammar class. I want an advanced grammar class that really gets into the nuts and bolts of the stuff.

As you may know, I’m a huge fan of The Teaching Company. This company offers college-level courses via compact disc and DVD (and, now, audio download). They’re great. Robert Greenberg’s “How to Listen to and Understand Great Music” is marvelous, and I recommend it to anyone. Well worth the $95 download.

As much as I love these courses, I try not to look at the catalog when it comes. I’m a frugal fellow, remember, and I don’t need to go out of my way to find reasons to spend money. Hell, I already have several courses from The Teaching Company that I haven’t finished auditing yet:

Today when I received the monthly Teaching Company e-mail solicitation, I dragged it to the trash, just like always. But as I did, something caught my eye: a course called “Building great sentences: Exploring the writer’s craft”.

Well.

As you can probably guess, there were mere microseconds between me noticing that and actually downloading the lectures. That’s right — I am so geeky that I would, without hesitation, pay $35 to download a 12-hour series of lectures on how to write sentences.

Now I’ve got to find an excuse to listen to this course. Anyone up for a trip to Boise and back? I’ll provide the wheels. And the listening material.

The Idea of Having

“You know our house isn’t really cluttered, right?” Kris said last night.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“When you write about your battle with clutter, it makes it sound like we live in a house filled with junk. We don’t. Our house is pretty clean. You’ve just got a lot of stuff you’re holding onto that you don’t know how to get rid of.”

“That’s true,” I said.

Our house isn’t cluttered. Sometimes it gets messy, but that’s my doing. For example, the dining room table has been covered with personal finance magazines for the past week as I worked on a forthcoming article at Get Rich Slowly. Or before that, I had all of our exercise stuff (yoga mats, exercise ball, stretch bands, etc.) strewn across the floor. But it’s not like we have junk all over the place.

Instead, I have piles of Stuff in my office, in the guest room, and in the workshop. Even these piles are moderately neat.

“And you know why you can’t get rid of Stuff, don’t you?” Kris continued.

“Because I want it,” I said.

“You think you want it,” she said. “You like the idea of having certain things, but you don’t actually use them. You’ve got dozens of books stacked in the guest room. They’ve been there for a year. Have you needed any of those books in that time?”

“No,” I said.

“That’s my point. You can’t bring yourself to get rid of them, yet you don’t use them, either. So they sit there. You wouldn’t even notice if you got rid of them. You should just do it.”

As always, Kris Gates is right. The difficulty is forcing myself to move from acknowledgment to action. Tiffany has offered to help me get rid of my Stuff. Maybe I’ll take her up on the offer. Or maybe I’ll just pile everything in the workshop and let it sit there for another year or two…

The Curse of Clutter

While Mom was in the hospital, Kris and I spent several hours at her house cleaning. I’ve noticed before that it’s easy to see the clutter in another person’s house, and this time was no different.

The trouble is that it’s difficult to see the clutter in your own house. Coming home from our cleaning trips, I could look around and see that there was too much Stuff around us. I could see that there was lots of stuff I could sell or give away. But I don’t know how to start.

I’ve spent the past year or so working to thin the amount of Stuff I own, and after each session, I feel like I’m down to bare bones. I know I’m not, but that’s how it feels.

Now, looking around my office, I wonder what I could part with. My personal finance books? My comic strip compilations? My comic book compilations? My music collection? I don’t know. I’m paralyzed by indecision, so I never start.

The workshop is worse. That’s my staging ground for the Stuff I’ve decided to get rid of, but which I haven’t actually been able to act upon. There are piles of books and records and who-knows-what-else sitting out there. Cleaning experts say that if you haven’t used something in a year, you should get rid of it. There are lots of things like that in the workshop, and yet I cannot pull the trigger.

Sometimes I feel like I should hire a “cleaning consultant” to come in and purge for me. Maybe Andrew or Pam would do the job for me. I’ve seen both of them ruthlessly purge clutter in the past.

Meanwhile, I’ll just sit around looking at all my Stuff.