Keeping the day job

I amaze myself at times with the number of distractions I can create to keep me from working on the project. Granted, I have listed a few new things on eBay™ in addition to the relists in order to reduce some of the new clutter, but it seems hardly enough to give a glowing report of things accomplished. A few of the distractions of late could be deemed legitimate, such as finding the required documentation for the caseworker who will hopefully present some financial assistance to pay off the HUGE debt accumulating with Mom's care. Or gathering up the items needed to complete the joyful task known as Tax Return Filing. I really don't mind filling out the forms, I just have this aversion to seeing how much I owe. This is probably why I have so many distractions for the distractions. One of my recent efforts to avoid battling the Tax Return Filing Beast, as well as to reduce the amount of sleep I receive, involved following through on one of those things that could be found on a "things to do before I die" checklist, if I had such a thing. Understand that this goes beyond the more common "things I ought to be doing," such as going to the Fitness Center and working out. The change of seasons allows me a bit more time outdoors, which tends to be less expensive than the Fitness Center, so I've been taking longer walks, generally on a daily basis. PT Lori might take comfort in that, especially if she discovers that I haven't been to the Fitness Center for a few weeks. In a way, "I ought to be working out" is being accomplished, just in less of trackable fashion. No, the recent effort to which I refer was definitely a "before I die" kind of thing.

It began with a sleepless night. I am not sure why it happens, but there are times when my brain decides to go into hyperactive mode just about five minutes after I go to bed. I have adopted the '30 minute rule,' which basically means that if I am still awake 30 minutes after I go to bed, I get up and do something. Usually the something is turning on some late night show or putting in a movie or following random links on the internet. This particular departure from the bed, however, I sat down at the computer and typed out the chaos that kept me from sleeping. The end result was an effort at creating [drum roll] a stand-up comedy routine. Hehheh. For years I have harbored this desire to determine if I could actually do such a thing, given my involvement in theatre, but self-censorship and self-doubt interfered with ever engaging in the activity. This time, however, I decided that the only way I would know if I could do it was to, well, do it. I took a small piece of what I wrote, found a local open microphone opportunity and sullied forth to discover that I was funnier five minutes after going to bed than I was hours before going to bed. Granted, the venue was not exactly the best for doing stand-up, so I might attempt once more to get up on stage and make perfect strangers laugh, but I will have to let the recent experience fade into the scary recesses of my brain that hold such things as auditioning for The Full Monty and taking the Jeopardy contestant test. In the meantime, I have a cluttered room calling out to me, and it isn't full of people wondering why the heck I'm there.