shankar2k's Journal: Clean Room II

A couple of years ago, I wrote this entry about how doing something simple like cleaning my room empowered me to feel good about my life. Well my life is very cyclic, and I've found myself again in the same kind of funk. In fact, to be precise, I'm stuck in Phase Two. So I did some self-diagnosis. I am in a funk because I feel like I'm not accomplishing anything. I don't get much done during the day because I wake up so late. I wake up so late because when my alarm goes off in the morning, the first thing I see is the hurricane that is my room and I just feel like sleeping more. And as before, in order to get out of the funk I needed to give my room the once-over that I never gave it when I moved in.

But like all sequels, the villain has to be more diabolical than the original. In Clean Room I, the villain was Depression, a fairly harsh foe. I was depressed because I didn't believe that I could really succeed in grad school, I was extremely lonely, and I couldn't take the drama in Harvest House. But I defeated my depression by moving out of Harvest House, and hunkering down and finishing my Master's thesis. I'm not sure if the loneliness ever went away, but I'm working on it.

This time around, the villain is Anxiety, and he/she/it/whatever is proving to be a much more insidious enemy to fight. The symptoms of Depression are readily apparent on my face and in my body language, and it is readily defeated by counseling, medication (to some degree), and distracting myself with pseudo-productive things. Anxiety is much harder to see. When I tell people that I have it, they are usually very surprised. I seem very confident and sure of myself most of the time. My Anxiety doesn't manifest itself with nervous stuttering (at least not most of the time) or heart palpitations or freaking out. I just find myself not doing anything. Sitting around, wiling away time. That might sound like Depression, but it's not. I do believe that I have a bright and promising future ahead of me, and if I figure out this stuff, I know that I can combat my loneliness. And I'm much better than I have been about not getting drawn into drama and not letting external drama affect me. So why do I do nothing? Because I'm scared. Scared of doing what I have to do get out of here. For all the bad stuff, being in grad school is kind of comfortable. I don't have much responsibility. I have enough money to putter about. I'm scared of starting up the research (and it is starting again) because I know it is a fairly hard road ahead. I'm scared because I might not succeed, and you can't fail at what you don't start right?

My counselor was telling me that cleaning the room was a way of rationalizing procrastination, by convincing myself that I'm doing something seemingly productive, and he probably is at least partially correct. But I know that if I had just gone to my lab or whatever, it would have been gnawing at me the whole time, and I would get nothing done anyway. Only time will tell who was right.

Cleaning my room was much more difficult than it was before. My room is considerably smaller than the one in Harvest House, and I have accumulated much more stuff than before. I started by throwing out as much useless stuff as I could find, but no matter how much I threw out, more kept coming. Cleaning is a funny job, because it is actually much easier at the beginning, when "low hanging fruit" like dirty laundry and random papers abound. Towards the end, when there is just random stuff that doesn't quite have a place but you know you don't want to get rid of is just lying on the ground taunting you. It took in fact this whole weekend, but I more or less finished.

Will it happen again? Almost certainly. Especially if the sequel is as big a hit as the first one. But I'm trying. If I can "maintain" the room until September 13, I believe that will be enough to establish precedent. And if I've learned anything about myself, I am all about precedent.

coincidence

[dominator2010]

It's coincidental that you mention all of those things because I feel the same way. I, too, have been going through cycles of depression and anxiety. I've been wondering if I'm doing enough or accomplished what I thought I would get done by now. And the room tops it off. My room is a mess. I've been going through old journal entries from before I was even hanging around here and one of the most common things was the feeling of needing to clean my room.

It's prevalent in my writing. I mention needing to cl

Re:coincidence

[shankar2k]

Darnit, the first version of this wasn't submitted. Ok Take II,

I think the key lesson I learned is that its much easier to maintain a room than to clean it. But to do that you have to make your room sustainable. I had so much junk in my room, that even when it was mostly clean, it still looked like a train wreck. So start throwing out stuff. If there is stuff that you only look at when you are cleaning or organizing, you probably don't need it. If you are environmental, take stuff to Goodwill or freecycle i