picture perfect...and young and restless

No, no, I'm not picture perfect.

But my apartment is. Or nearly so.

I spent all weekend working on the Picture Wall. I've exhausted my supply of attractive antique postcards and cute greeting cards, so on Saturday when out with Meg and Phillip I bought two itsy-bitsy calendars at a remarkable discount, one full of black-and-whites of New York from the 30s/40s, and one full of Van Goghs. I used the black-and-whites to finish the Picture Wall...well, almost finish; I need to hang about three more, but my drill battery died...and hung the Van Goghs in the hallway around a larger Van Gogh already there. It's not like anyone really looks at pictures in the hall -- there's no "step back and appreciate" space -- but you can see it at angles from the living room and entryway, and the effect is nice.

But what is this restlessness? I find it creeps into me every six months or so. There's this inexplicable desire for something new and different, something more, and it's not diminishing with time, this time around. Maybe it's the kid in me rebelling at the laid-out steadfastness of daily routine, when for the first twenty-two years of my life I had new classes every year...or, in college, every semester. And then for the two years after that there was a job change roughly every nine months. And now things are pretty straightforward. I have a nine-to-five. I'm here for awhile. Every week is basically the same.

So I go insane on the weekends with projects at home. I obsess about every little detail in my living space. I even worked up the energy to clean for the first time in forever -- the basics, scrubbing, sweeping, vacuuming, mopping -- but now that that's done I'll probably go all out and start washing the walls, which hasn't been done since I moved in almost two years ago. When I go home tonight I plan to rearrange the wall opposite the Picture Wall to get a little more feng shui out of it.

It's not that I want to go back to school. I don't. I enjoy the routine, I love my bosses, I'm more or less satisfied with my work. But there's something missing.

Of course there is, you might say. It's what you're always clamoring about. You're single.

Well, yes. There's always that. But that doesn't pang quite so badly lately, or else I'm just ignoring it. I had a great date on Friday night, so the awful loneliness eased for a few hours in fun and conversation. And meantime I'm regaining my center in myself.

But something else is missing. My best guess is that I'm bottling up my writing. It's always so easy for me to say, I'm going to do this; but when the "this" is as monumental as overcoming my own fears of rejection and vast inertia toward laziness to send things out for publication, I lag at following through. And I've been working out a lot of stuff, and fixating on my messy apartment, and that's been absorbing my attention.

The good thing is that my Lenten vow is to get up every weekday morning at five. (I know Lenten vows usually involve giving something up -- and I'm giving up later hours and later sleep, and necessarily some social time during the weekdays -- but what I really want to build is discipline, which also ties into the Lenten season and the preparation to observe the passion and the resurrection of Christ who was always disciplined in submission to the Father.) I used to get up absurdly early in high school, and I loved it -- something about sitting in a robe sipping coffee and journalling, reading the Bible, or writing while the earth blinks and begins to open its eyes is calming and invigorating simulataneously. So I'll begin to see some changes in my morning routine, and some time before the wear of the day during which to channel my energy into the craft; and maybe thereby an ease some of that restlessness.

I also need to cultivate a greater involvement in church. I'm hungering for some kind of ministry. I want to do something, not just think about it, or talk about it, or write about it. Fortunately I saw a few opportunities in the church bulletin, so I'm tackling that this week.

Meanwhile I'm making endless lists of things I want to accomplish at home, and trying to make myself file all the papers running loose about the office like a flock of madcap sheep. I hate filing. But it needs to be done, and so I have to do it.