I woke up feeling irritable, frustrated, and depressed and the feelings just got worse as the morning progressed. I started to jot down a list of things to accomplish this weekend. I expected the list to have three or so things on it. Quickly it expanded to over twenty “must do” items.

Then I went in to take a shower. When I stepped on the scale I saw this:

Or in stone, if you’re so inclined:

There’s so much to do and I accomplish so little each day that getting anywhere with anything feels utterly hopeless. So I sulked. Instead of exercising, as I had intended, I ate sugary breakfast cereal and drank Pepsi Cola.

After about two hours I started working on exterior window frames: scraping, sanding, patching, and painting with primer (as listed above). The “tiki room,” the “guest room,” and the “kitchen” windows are more or less done except for a final color coat of paint… and adding weatherstripping… and maybe replacing the screening on the “guest room” windows because it has more holes than I thought, which will necessitate buying more screen material, so that’s a task for some other time. So I marked off three items from that list.

Meanwhile, inside the house, the room I’m trying to declutter, the room from which I have removed ten or more boxes of mass in the last couple of weeks, is more crowded and disorganized than ever. Things are stacked in precarious piles. Touching one thing causes a domino-like chain reaction of boxes and bits and pieces of junk collapsing into a chaos of clutter. This is part of what set me off this morning, when I inadvertently triggered one of these crapquakes by simply reaching for a pencil.

I’ve been trying to “change my life” for thirty days now, and so far I’m seeing absolutely ZERO improvement. If anything, I’m more frustrated and depressed than before, I feel like I’m surrounded by more clutter than I was when I started… and I’m fatter!