I’m normally a fairly cluttered person.  My stuff is usually all scattered about my room or car or bag or whatever.  I have stuff still in the boxes from when I moved 6 days ago, along with the stuff in boxes from when I moved 5 months ago along with the stuff in boxes form when I went to Europe last year.  While at my parents house on Sunday I discovered boxes from when I moved out of their house next to boxes of my old toys along with boxes of old video game magazines dating from the early 90s!  I never clean up after myself and I’m thinking that taking a month to get my life clean is just what the doctor ordered.

Now I have this month, the next month (no swearing) and the month after that (no leaving a mess) planned out.  My 12 absinances are 1/2 way done!

One thought that’s been on my mind is that maybe part of this no procrastination thing should be that I should always do work time before playtime?  They both kind of go together and it is one thing I never learned.  Maybe I’ll save that for another month.  I don’t know.

One thing I’m pretty stoked about this month is the ability to wield a well placed lie from time to time.  I don’t think I’ve had the occasion to do so yet but I’ll be extra awesome when I do!

So I called her back and, 20 minutes of complaining and explaining later, I was done and felt a little better about confronting an unpleasant task.

The phone rings again…  Damnit, it’s the annoying client I mentioned last month…  He hasn’t paid me in a year and always calls w/ emergencies.  This time at 9pm.  I’m in the middle of a good book and the last thing I want to do is walk him through some procedure.  Maybe it’ll just be a quick one.
“Hello?  Uh huh, your mail isn’t working?  Let me walk you through it’s settings…”  Ugh…  Oh great, he has to go take another call.  Awesome, “Call me back when you’re done.”

“Ok so let’s configure outlook…  An error message?  What’s it say?  Hrmm we should run a detect and repair.  You can’t find the cd?  OK, find the cd, run a detect and repair and then call me back to configure.”

Great, more reading…

Arg, he’s calling again,  “It still isn’t working?  Sounds like outlook is hosed…  Ok let’s reinstall office.  Go ahead and run the uninstall and then reinstall office.  Call me when you’re done”

It’s not 11pm and I don’t want to walk him through anything.  This guy is a taker and he’ll take and take and take and take until you realize you’re being taken.  I’m gonna strategically plan a shower right now…  Hopefully I won’t hear the phone when it goes off.

Aha, my plan worked perfectly, he called and I didn’t gave to ignore his call.  Plus it’s now passed midnight and who knows, it might be too late to call him back!

On a side note I may have to have a month of no sneakiness.

Highest on this list is not ignoring phone calls and getting back to friends/clients who are trying to contact me.  Don’t get me wrong though, I love not not getting back to people immediately and it definitely has it’s advantages.  It sort of ‘trains’ people  not to call just to bullshit.  I must not be a phone person or maybe I just like my bullshit like I like my sex: in person.  It’s like the first line of defense against useless blabbing.   It works pretty well too.  Most my friends don’t call me just to blab and most my clients don’t call without first trying to solve the problem theirself.

There are extremes though and I’ve been known to forget to call people back altogether or let my voice mail pile up so high that I don’t get back to clients emergency situations until much later.  Bad business.

This month, I will not ignore calls unless in a meeting or other situation that legitimately justifies hitting the ignore button on my phone.  Also, I won’t put off business projects and other tasks simply because I don’t feel like doing it.

So without further ado!