Game Changers

For the last several years, I’ve sat in a broken folding chair at my desk. I should probably get a new chair; this one is almost impossible to sit in. It’s brokenness cannot be ignored. I should also probably paint the wall I’m forced to look at–as well as the other three–and get rid of the gender neutral, non-threatening stripes on the walls of what used to be someone’s nursery. I should also accept that I hate facing the wall when I work and move the damn desk so it faces the window so I can look out at how beautifully those pumpkins are doing in my garden and panic about how many damn pumpkins I might wind up with in a couple of months.

Then again, it might help to weed that garden I’d stare at. Or, hell, water it. Maybe if my desk faced the window I’d become fixated on what a neglectful gardener I am and not accomplish anything. I could say here, “That would be a real game-changer,” except that it wouldn’t be, because I would still not be accomplishing anything, but it would be in a slightly different form and facing in a different direction. (This is also the same room where I no longer do yoga. You get the picture–this place is a vacuum. And could use the love and attention of a vacuum, for that matter.)

The truth is, I’m sitting on the floor, having given up the chair. While the broken chair may evoke a pitying response in some people, the fact that I can move the whole operation to the floor because I have a working laptop computer should really cancel out the original emotion and return everyone to a state of mild annoyance or apathy. There used to be a futon here, but it was twenty-years old, very lumpy, and recently one of our cats forced our hand on what to do with it when the wind blew the door shut one morning and she was trapped in here for about eight hours.

There are four stuffed animals lying on the floor in this room in various poses of lifelessness. In fact, viewed as a group, one might think that they were placed here in some synthetic, “all new material” stuffed homage to a gangster movie. They’ve been here a while, and it only occurs to me now that my not bothering to move them is a little disturbing.

The point is, there’s a lot to do here: fix broken stuff, take a little care, pay closer attention, make small but important decisions.

I still haven’t moved the stuffed animals.