Today in my net travels I stumbled across this little site called Do Nothing for 2 Minutes. It was a challenge to sit and watch the screen for 2 minutes without doing anything (I failed about 4 times before making it through). Give it a shot and let me know how ya do

P.S. The parent site is calm.com which is also pretty neat and worth a look-sie.

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I’ve written before about the things I’ve tried to help me help myself in this regard. In some cases I’ve gotten better but I know that there’s a long way to go. One of the things that I’ve found that has really made a difference is my daily email from The Universe. Each weekday morning I wake up to a note from The Universe sitting in my inbox, they are non-denominational and encourage positive thinking, remind me of the good in life and just generally make me smile. My weekday ritual is to wake up and before doing anything else I read my email from The Universe and try to commit to memory what lesson it’s trying to convey so I can reflect on it during the day. If you’d like to sign up (it’s free) simply click here. It’s a nice moment of the day and hopefully it does as much good for you as it has for me

I hope this all continues on an upward swing, God knows I need it. Like Dory says “Just keep swimming!”

But I digress.

I need an insight into the moment that I’m repeating that is causing the wheels of fate to turn in the direction they inevitably do. Just a peek at the course of events or action that is causing the repeat so I can prevent it in the future. The continual reboot mode that I’ve been trapped in is starting to get a little old, I’m starting to get pretty damn jaded. Not much is left except for my own weak theories these days and even those have slowly begun to fade out into the background…

The short answer to that is – I don’t know.

There’s been an insane amount of stuff going on in my life that is hilarious and absolute blog fodder. Take for instance yesterday I found myself inflating a blow-up goat for someone as a welcome home present. Yeah…let that sink in.

It’s been interesting to say the least. Every once in awhile I feel the old me peeking out of the haze with a snarky observation but as quickly as it surfaces it disappears. My heart hurts, my head hurts, and it’s taking a toll on this place something fierce.

I’m beginning to wonder if it wouldn’t be better to just pull the plug on this place instead of letting it limp to it’s eventual death. Start over somewhere new, open a shiny new site that I can moan and bitch and complain about how bad things are for me and how pathetic everything has gotten.

But honestly I don’t know if that would be any better. Hell I don’t think I could ever get rid of this damn thing…it’s actually been the only constant in my life since the end of 2004. I find that kind of strange…but hey that’s just how it goes I suppose.

That’s right…the entire pot smoking population of this city…right here in my complex.

Super.

When I first moved in I was aware that my apartment had this…uh…scent about it. I just assumed it was that the previous tenant smoked cigarettes in here and I was smelling the leftover stench.

Yeah. Not the case.

The smell, I found out, is actually every single neighbor I have toking up at all hours of the day and night thereby clogging the air ducts with the poignant skunk smell which no matter what scent of candle from Bath and Body Works I burn or how many I light at the same time I can’t get it to dissipate. Even my kick ass Balsam Fir candle is no match for the great ganja aroma that has permeated this enitre place.

I’ve been here for a week and have witnessed girls who by all accounts appear much younger than I (and one looked pregnant no less) sitting out in the common courtyard rolling and then smoking a joint. Can we pause here and just say – ‘Yay for the future!’

Walking past other apartments I find myself going though these “clouds” of smell…someone isn’t ventilating cautiously…then again I don’t think they really care.

Today I got home and was laying in bed looking out my sliding door where three guys were in the parking lot and just plopped down on a curb and proceeded to puff puff pass right then and there.

I’m beginning to wonder if there was something I missed in the lease agreement that required me to be stoned at least part of the day…like a Pothead HOA kind of deal. Which kind of concerns me. Will I be evicted for a lack of Bob Marley posters in my apartment?

Beings that I live in the desert and it’s fucking hot I have no choice but to keep running my A/C which isn’t helping the stink in my place via air duct contamination. But on the bright side at least now I understand why I’ve gone through seven bags of Cheetos since I moved in!

Thankfully I haven’t found myself in that situation.

My response to change really bothers me. My response to the unplanned or uncontrolled makes me worry about myself. I’m not OCD a la Jack Nicholas in As Good As It Gets, but I am strongly defined by my routines either real or projected. Things I don’t know about make me nervous, major changes in plans I’ve set make me annoyed or angry. This condition has been part of me my whole life in various forms but in the last year or so it’s become so pronounced that I’ve actually felt worried about it.

I don’t want to go through life bored, with no adventure. I find that when I do get a thrilled feeling about an experience in spite of what it took out of me to get there I’m happy. This rut that I’m parked in is destroying me. I think it’s time to kick this bitch into to four wheel drive and move on. I need to capture that ability to let things flow…just go with stuff. Stop trying to plan, re-plan and then check that plan for errors while over analyzing every last detail. If you were to step inside my head it’s like a giant flow chart/risk management system and three ring circus all crammed inside running 24/7.

This trait makes me super valuable at work, my bosses love that I can crank out production, create working systems from scratch, see the big picture and predict pitfalls and failures in order to avoid them completely. I’m golden with this personality in the corporate world. I can get them there on time every time. But in my personal life it’s taking me on a long walk off a short pier.

I used to be a lot more creative in my personal life, that has even taken a nose dive. If it doesn’t fit into what should be going on in my head I axe it. I’ve posted about my issues with unfinished projects and I honestly have to say that I think I’ve actually created a self-inflicted pattern of not getting things finished. It’s become comfortable for me to not finish something I’ve started. And that is no good at all.

It’s time to bring the balance back. It’s time to start living again. It’s time to get out of my head and into reality. I don’t know where this is going to go, how it’s going to turn out or what it’s going to entail. The cliché is that a journey starts with the first step – so today I’m tying my shoes and getting ready to start walking.

Even behind the scenes here there are 12 drafted posts waiting for me to finish them. I get to easily distracted anymore. I’ve had to force myself to become ruthless with what projects I do start and pretty much just toss out ones that I know I’ll never actually get around to doing. Which drives me nuts, because some of them are really good ideas!

I need to hone my follow through mechanisim…just not sure how to go about doing it.