This Old House

I'm sitting down writing because I'm stalling. There are so many things I have to do that thinking about getting them done overwhelms me. Of course I could just start on one and that would be a step in the right direction, but I need motivation. I just had a second cup of coffee, which is a great motivator for me when the caffeine kicks in, so I'm hoping to jump up and get started anytime now. That's usually the way I work, trying to do everything while I have a burst of energy rather than a slow, steady progression toward my goal.

My focus today is on getting the house cleaned and doing some painting that needs done. I don't live in a luxurious mansion, and when it's cluttered it reminds me of one of those houses on that show about people who are pack rats, Hoarders, I think is the name. Well, maybe not quite that bad, but it looks well on the way sometimes. A lot of the time I have to stop and tell myself that there are people essentially living in an indoor garbage dump (quite a few in this area, actually)and I shouldn't worry so much about the appearance of this place. In fact, there are a lot of aspects of my life which I view with a pessimistic eye most of the time, and fail to see the treasure underneath. A professor of mine brought in various denominations of foreign currency last week, and one of the pieces he brought was a Spanish silver coin. He'd been snorkeling off the Florida coast and found a clump of what he thought was trash. Being an ecology-minded person he threw it in his boat to dispose of it later, only to discover that it was a wad of silver coins dated 1622, most of which he sold for a tidy sum. My house isn't worth as much as those silver coins, but it is home, and it's hard to put a price on that, no matter what the condition.