Workspace or Potential Hoarding Episode?

It is the last day of my vacation. Sigh. I’m perusing my to-do list, and have completely accomplished close to two of the ten items I had written down. Yup. I have to confess that the internet is an evil, evil curse that has me in its vice-like grip on a daily basis. Lest you think I’ve just been shopping at Amazon (ok, maybe a little) and reading about Lindsay Lohan’s latest arrests, most of it has been productive work on my alter-ego’s blog, research, sales promos, putting together and ordering some SWAG, and other social media concerns.

But seriously – I just don’t have time for a job. Unfortunately, I don’t have time for homelessness either, so off to work I shall go tomorrow.

(Random side note: As I am in the process of writing an historical erotic manuscript, I find that the cadence of my prose has taken on a decidedly 19^th century lilt. Stuff of nonsense!)

Okay, I’m back. On the plus side, each day as I have forced myself to “close tabs” on internet explorer, I have managed to squeeze out  approximately 16K words on said historical work. 4K more, and I will have reached my vacation goal. It could happen. Remember – sleep is for wimps. The other plus side is that I had a BLAST with my family last weekend when we actually left the confines of our little coastal world and went somewhere. Shocking, I know. We had two eating and shopping and eating, and more eating packed days, first at the Timberline Lodge at Mt. Hood –

Reason # 1 for the visit: they filmed the exteriors of The Shining here.

Now we’ve been on the Pacific Crest Trail in California & Oregon. Okay, not for more than a few hours – but it still counts!

There were chipmunks running around the dining room where we ate at their amazing lunch buffet. Gordon Ramsey would be scandalized. I thought they were cute. What’s a little rodent hair amongst friends? And then we continued our frivolity in Portland at the Pittock Mansion

Kashmere with John – Lord of the Manor

 

Living Room/Slash Music Room

And the Washington Square Mall and Cheesecake Factory where much money was spent on doo-dads and smelly stuff from Hot Topic, Spencer’s and Bath & Body Works, culminating with a birthday feast at the Cheesecake Factory. At one point, I was certain I would never be hungry again (as if) – we ate so much.

 

(2^nd random side note: I was so inspired by the Lodge & the Mansion, that they are now being featured as locales in my sci-fi romance epic, which, God help me, shall be finished one day. After the other myriad projects. And stuff.)

Which brings us all back to my last day of vacation. On the sad little list is an entry that says “Clean-up and organize workspace”. If I’d had an ounce of intelligence, that would have been the very first thing I tackled. How I get anything accomplished is beyond me. But I realize I’ve always battled the whole ‘paper’ thing. I can remember complaining to someone years ago – prior to the advent of PC’s for every man, woman & child on the planet – that I was drowning in paper. Once the PC came along, I thought all my worries would be solved. Yet – all that has seemed to accomplish is to produce more and more paper. I should write a horror film about the Revenge of the Killer Document.

Alright, prepare to be frightened:

I know its in here somewhere…

You should have seen the office back when I had the record label – now that was epic. Band photos, post cards, lists of distributors, flyers, radio charting, festival lists, record store lists (back when those still existed) and Lord only knows what else. A great deal of it tends to be my frenzied scribbles on scraps of paper whenever anything leaps into my frazzled little mind.

So even though the rest of the house is a well-oiled, meticulously kept clean machine (courtesy of the hubby, who has kindly decided not to divorce me over my little corner of paper hell), this one area needs some serious help. In the interest of heel-dragging and not cleaning it up, I have elected to write this post. But by doing so, I have also crossed one more thing off of my list.