MY GET UP AND GO

My get up and go has got up and went. It has abandoned me beside a highway paved with good intentions. After a year and a half of trying, and with all that free time at hand, my resolution to reorganized has created havoc in my household. Like the road to hell, the landscape of my life has developed pot holes of unfinished projects, perfectly placed to trip me up. The crowded closets and dumpster-drawers, the cluttered tabletops and bookcases, the mishmash of art supplies, baskets of dreck from God knows where, and the stacks of papers and books … all those sad remains of all those ambitious projects, started in good faith, have been left like speed bumps on the road to hell … evidence of my good intentions.

Not only have I not finished clearing out the closet, but now I can’t find anything in there. It has become a black hole. When I started the project over a year ago, I had a whole new comprehensive plan of reorganization. It was brilliant! I remember thinking so as I dragged out old slacks, homely sweaters, and worn-out shoes. I bagged them all along with the skirts and tops from a previous life. I tossed out old shoulder pads and tights from my long-lost fashionista-wanna-be phase. And then as I waited for permission to take them to Goodwill, they slowly started to sift back into my denuded closet. I found I didn’t want to wear my good clothes while noodling around the house, and missed having all my old favorites to wear. So the old and comfortable got mixed in with the neatly organized, and there they remain … still fighting for space, at war with each other.

My bookcases have become a bizarre mish-mash of hardware boxes, old photograph albums, magazines, and art supplies. Miscellaneous baskets and boxes occupy tucked-away corners that allow me the freedom to ignore their existence. And as we all know it is treacherous to move a thingamajig from its original storage place no matter how illogical that spot might be, because once it has been moved, you will never find it again except by accident. So imagine if you will, a Mount Vesuvius of movement and change. All those little bits and pieces rearranged in their baskets and drawers and boxes according to some fleeting brain wave of a good idea long-forgotten.

Just the memory of all this futile activity makes me tired. I yearn for my old over-crowded closet, tidy shelves of unread books, and random storage spaces for this-es and that-s. I really miss the pre-blitzkrieg life I once knew where my hand would automatically reach for the old decrepit file when I wanted to know just when it was I bought my water heater. Like the household accounts, I can no longer find my old rolodex … could I really have thrown it away? And where oh where has my little do-hickey gone? All these and oh so many other niggling pinpricks of loss crop up daily.

So one would suppose my next step would be to begin again with the weeding and the winnowing and the filtering and the sifting. They are all there, the shelves of old books now in piles and boxes awaiting donation, the stacks of old cards awaiting recycling, the half-used candles and the old tee shirts and the socks occupying a no-mans-land between then and now. They are all asking to be sorted out. However, I have absolutely no desire to continue with any of my abandoned pandemic projects. I have no intention of sorting through anything else ever again for as long as I live … or at least until I am forced by circumstances to sort through some small part of a drawer or closet, in search of a thingamajig, because as I told you, my get up and go, has got up and went.

I would love to blame my lack of get up and go on some orphan disease. Perhaps the dread Syndrome Bradipo Perpetuo or the recurrent Sbrigati e Aspetta. I mean, how pleasant it would be to say to those who ask, “Oh I am recovering nicely. Thank you for asking. But the doctor has recommended that I keep a low profile and remain inert as much as possible so as not to stress my delicate system of avoidance and rationalization.”  I would certainly like to be able to garner sympathy and project an image of silent suffering. But I am forced to concede defeat in this endeavor. Unfortunately, representing inertia as an orphan disease has no merit in the scientific community.

So instead, I shall attribute my sloth to the pandemic and the vast landscape of pathological behaviors now being linked to it. In all fairness, I have to say my inertia is more pathetic than pathological. But who am I to ignore the chance to participate in the class action suit being brought against the pandemic in the court of public opinion for liability in regards to the general destruction of life as we once knew it? And who is to say I am wrong in my diagnosis? After all pandemic psychosis, like supply chain disruption can now be linked to any and all the irks and irritations of life in general. I feel it is unreasonable to expect me to pull myself up my worn-out old bootstraps. Why should I? I would much rather spend my time here where my get up and go left me, sitting beside the road awaiting an Uber to my future … or my payout from the pandemic class action settlement, whichever comes first.