Writer's Block

So today I thought I might put off posting my daily blog until later in the day because of the inner monologue: 

omg, what am i going to write about today? um, um... uhh... hmm....

I still haven't quite decided, even as I quite obviously sit here writing typing this up... but you just know, coming from me, that it's going to be yet another long-winded post that somehow has some hidden (or obvious) meaning. Either way, I'm doing it now. Procrastination is so overrated.

Everything I write has to have meaning, at least to me. Whether I write for relief, validation, amusement, I can't bring myself to post anything that I feel has absolutely no value. Back when I used to do a lot of song and poem writing, everything had to rhyme too. Thank goodness I don't feel the need to rhyme my blogs, although I do have to chuckle pondering what they might sound like....

Came to write but the words won't flow
Now what's on my mind? Nobody knows!
Where are the words that once came so easy?
Perhaps they ran, fearing they were too cheesy.
Wait, there they are, come back again!
Hello, hello! Verbs and nouns, my good ol' friends!

Okay, so maybe that didn't quite rhyme. I tried. My point is that writing for the sake of writing is kind of silly. The whole reason that I'm pushing myself to write a blog every single day is to keep myself motivated. Sometimes it's difficult to stay motivated when you don't see immediate results, although I'm honestly thrilled that I've already got three followers (my loyal and loving mother was my first! Does that still count?) and plenty of positive feedback. More important to me than any of that, however, is simply the satisfaction I get from knowing I have a good outlet for my ideas, thoughts, and stories and a great inlet of support and friendship in exchange for it.

Writing for the sake of writing is also like doing housework to "keep up appearances" or writing a book just to make a quick buck as so many popular best-selling authors seem to have started doing. It's like selling out. But once you know what you hope to gain from the experience, it does make it a lot easier to just let the words flow.

Housework is kind of the same way, at least for me. There's got to be a reason for me to clean. Marco and I finally took up a plan of action to keep our house clean, as well as keep our stress levels down due to clutter. I didn't exactly grow up in a neat freak household, although I do remember my mom always apologizing to guests (when we had them, which was kind of rare-ish) about the house being a wreck. In my opinion (as well as many others') it was never really all that bad. Just some clutter. So we were packrats, big deal. Well, I've finally realized why it was such a big deal for the house to be cluttered. Marco and I were both really, heinously stressed out all the time due to our finances being thhhbbbbbt (aka "poopy"), not getting to spend a decent amount of time together... and the cluttered state of our trailer. One night a few weeks ago, though, he came home all excited about a new idea for us to implement to help us out with our messy ways: the job jar.

See, what you do is write down all the separate tasks that cleaning your home includes, as well as throwing in a couple more for good measure. What we got down -- sixteen tasks overall -- were these four daily tasks:

1. Dishes
2. Trash
3. Laundry
4. General clutter

For our weekly tasks, we wrote down the following twelve to round off the list:

1. Vacuum - back end of trailer
2. Vacuum - front end of trailer
3. Toilets scrubbed
4. Cabinets cleaned
5. Coffee table and living room picked up, washed as needed
6. Computer desk and room picked up, washed as needed
7. Bedding changed, washed
8. Fridge cleaned out
9. Hard floors swept and mopped
10. Car cleaned out, washed (interior only; we don't care how the outside looks!)
11. Bathroom counters and sinks organized, washed
12. Microwave cleaned

And that's it! Really, when we broke the bulk of our mess issues down, there wasn't all that much to it. Six days out of the week, we each pick a task out of the weekly jar, and every day we each pick two jobs out of the daily jar. We're on the third day after implementation of the job jar and our trailer is still clean, and I'm still feeling motivated and positive about it. Actually, more than anything, I feel... relieved... that we've finally found a solution that can and will work for us. With as much as Marco works, it's hard for him to do anything at home without a plan set out in front of him, and the job jar helps break the seemingly-insurmountable task of house cleaning down for us both. By far and away the worst part of cleaning has always been how daunting it seems. Now that we have the tasks laid out and separated, it's not nearly as intimidating and is actually kind of fun (yes, I said fun... don't suffer a myocardial infarction now, mom!) to see the tasks get finished, one by one, and be placed in the "completed" jar until they're all finished and ready to be picked again.