pith.org

Shutting it down,

published at 7:01pm on 01/21/07

It’s almost impossible to shut it down these days, at least for me. She’s threatened to take me out of town for a week, to the mountains where there is no Internet, where I can’t check my email, or get phone calls or watch tv. We’ll have to play board games and read books, and this sounds absolutely amazing. I tried to stop my subscription to the newspaper this weekend. I, like many New Yorkers, like to read the weekend New York Times. It makes me feel like I am a part of the world, and it makes me feel like I’ve gone to the gym, just from having to carry it from my front door to my coffee table (ha ha). But even though I told the Times’s web site to suspend my subscription for the weekend so I catch something of a breather, there it was, all thirty pounds of it, staring at me as I went out to check on the washing machine on Saturday morning.

Mercifully, there was no paper waiting for me there this morning or I may have completely lost it.

See, I have a problem. If the paper hadn’t showed up on Saturday, I could have gone through my week, blissfully unaware of the outside world. I would have gotten my news from the local NPR station, I would have read the blog posts that my friends sent to me throughout the days, and I would have been free. Now, though, the paper is sitting on my coffee table, on top of last week’s unread newspaper, calling out to be read. Though, actually, it’s more of a whisper.

“read me.”

It sits there, wearing its own magazine section like a blanket, stretched out across my table like a cat, waiting to be stroked. I could move it, but an object that size demands attention. I had cleared out all of the newspapers from previous months, but since just before the new year I’ve fallen behind again. Work has taken over my life, and when I return home all I want to do is shut down. To make it all go away. But there’s always more to pay attention to. The bills need to be paid. Clients need attention. Projects need work. My desk, for a brief moment a zen garden has once again become that vacant lot, strewn with articles to read, reference materials for my job, catalogs of curtains and mirrors I will never buy, because I am unable to actually take the time to clearly articulate, to myself or Crate & Barrel, what exactly it is that I want in an ottoman. Just today I found the reply card for a wedding that is taking place in March. The plane tickets have been purchased, the hotel paid for, but the reply card, requiring only my name and two check boxes (“attend,” “attend”) was still tucked away in the sealed envelope, to be dealt with “later.”

And the newspaper, all week, demands to be read.

Two dollar rentals from Blockbuster (“what a great deal!”). A bill from Fast Company (“need to get the startup to pay for that”). My membership to MoMA (“I will go to more museums this year if I have already paid for it”). They are all sitting on my desk, requiring attention of some sort. All of my 2007 receipts are sitting in front of me, waiting for me to clear out my 2006 receipts from my desk drawer, the 2006 receipts waiting to be filed away in my closet. Why do I save all of my ATM receipts? I have no idea. Burning Man tickets have been purchased (what the hell was I thinking?) and I am all of a sudden struck with the reality of needing to actually prepare to spend a week out in the middle of the desert, where I will definitely be unable to check my email and where I will be forced to cart around all of the water I need to survive. Someone, please, help me with that, or I will most definitely drop dead on the playa.

The apartment is getting renovated this quarter, that much I’ve decided, and an email is going out to some architects tonight, but that will just open me up to another flurry of emails. It’s getting ridiculous at this point though – my stop top is broken and the oven door doesn’t actually stay closed any more. The minute the refrigerator starts heating my food I’m just going to cry.

Sometimes I think that I might be better off if I just threw out everything on my desk, trashed my inbox, threw out all of the newspapers and started over again. I would probably lose something important, but at this point I just need to stem the inward flow so I can actually start sending things out into the world again.

Just as soon as I finish this one thing…

Filed under: Personal