I had just sat down for my semi-annual haircut, and Lisa was fastening the barber cape around my neck. Pretending to be a professional stylist she said, “It’s been a while since you’ve been in. What’s going on in your world?”
“A clusterfuck, I said, “wrapped in another clusterfuck with clusterfuck sauce. Kind of a Clusterfuck Wellington.”
Beef Wellington is a dish made of beef tenderloin packed in pâté, mushrooms, and ham (or better yet, prosciutto) all wrapped in puff pastry and baked.
That’s what my life has been like lately. A Wellington of clusterfuckness. A disastrous lawsuit. Downsizing my photography studio. More accurately, eliminating it. Aging and ailment. Car problems. Maintenance and repair of everything. Chronic pain. Hip replacement. Winterizing the house. Holidays, visitors, entertaining, endless cleaning of the kitchen.
Of course this is all occurring during a global clusterfuck. Looming World War III, global pandemic, vaccines that don’t vaccinate, supply chain problems, inflation, and high prices.
It’s too much to deal with. We need coping mechanisms. So, we do the logical thing: distract ourselves with unneeded purchases of more stuff— a pizza oven for example.
Attack of the Accumulosaurus!
It’s frightening how accumulation can catch up to you. One minute you have a bunch of stuff, and the next it has unleashed the Kraken. On you.
I’ve been accumulating things for seventy years, and despite two divorces and the attendant culling of possessions, I still have more stuff than most people I know. (I have one friend who is such a successful accumulator that I look like a rank amateur.)
My studio is next to a doggie daycare, and when they let the dogs out into the yard, they unleash a cacophony of excited barking. That’s the way my possessions are barking at me: “Fix me!” Lubricate me!” “I’m falling down!” “Tighten my nuts!” “I’m leaking!”
At my age it won’t be long before I start leaking myself. (Insert your own “nut tightening” joke here.)
There are several things that make tackling this mess particularly difficult:
First, I suffer from/with ADD which makes it maddenly difficult to prioritize, especially when there are a plethora of options and no evident starting place or most important task. We ADD types need an emergency to focus our attention, and when that happens we are able to hyper-focus, in the clinical sense.
But I can’t rely on hyperfocus. I need to tame this accumulation monster before it becomes a crisis.
The second factor is what I call Nested Preconditions.
This is a situation where the task you want to address requires you to complete some other task first, such as purchasing a tool or clearing a space to work. That precondition also has its own preconditions, and so do those. It’s like standing between two mirrors where you can see reflections of yourself repeating to infinity, but in this case, you see the prospect of completing the task soaring for the horizon.
Let’s say you have painfully sorted through the fog of ADD and all of the tasks competing for your attention and have finally decided which one you will tackle. You make a mental note of the tools, equipment, solvents, brushes, containers, fasteners, and adhesives needed and head for the garage, where you discover your bottle of glue is the consistency of granite. This triggers the (first) trip to the hardware store where you discover, as you reach the store’s front door, that you have forgotten your wallet.
Returning home, the Low Tire Pressure light in your car illuminates. Not a problem. Just fire up the compressor and quickly— shit! the pressure gauge, and the air chuck, are missing. Now you have a quandary. You can spend an unknown amount of time looking for the missing parts with no guarantee of success, or you can drive to the hardware store on a low tire and get new ones when you go for the glue. This is why I have three of everything.
When you return home to inflate the tire, new nested preconditions will prevent you from ever accomplishing the original task. In short order, you will have forgotten the original task and will be back at the beginning, considering options with no clear goal in mind. And you will have forgotten where you left your “to do” list.
Unused Capacity.
In my (former) line of work, it made sense to have a wide variety of materials, tools, and hardware on hand so I could react quickly to a customer’s needs. I was in film special effects and the assignments nearly always required tight time frames. The fewer times I had to go to the hardware store, the faster and more profitably I could work. But there’s a cost to having that kind of capacity. Especially when the work dries up. What was once was an advantage is suddenly a big liability. That’s where I find myself today.
Holding on to stuff for projects you’re going to get to “one of these days.”
I’m quickly running out of “these days.” I’m not going to “get to” very many of these projects, some of which I’ve been planning to get to for decades. I’ll just wait until retirement and then I’ll have all the time in the world. It should be called “retiredment.” I’m whipped. I didn’t plan on falling apart.
At first, it felt like a failure to give up on these ideas, but as I lighten the possession load, I’ve noticed the lightening of the mental load as well. Now I can look forward to peace of mind, unburdened by the pressure of trying to get it all done in time. Plus, many of these dream projects don’t seem to be as cool and inventive as I always thought. No one is going to notice how brilliant my ideas appear to me.
Too Much Stuff-ness.
Big house, big car, back seat, full bar
Houseboat won't float, bank won't tote the note
Too much stuff, there's just too much stuff
It'll hang you up dealing with too much stuff
—Delbert McClinton
Owning anything requires investment beyond the purchase price. It requires cleaning, preventive maintenance, purchasing consumables, allocating storage space, occasional repair, and remembering who borrowed it last and promised to bring it right back but didn’t.
These requirements multiply as you accumulate ever more stuff, eventually reaching critical mass and completely capturing your life. You are now a prisoner of your possessions. Scott Adams once said, “The reason I go on vacation is to get away from my possessions.” I know this syndrome all too well.
The accumulated maintenance load demands more of your time and attention, which do not grow commensurately. In fact, your time and attention are reduced through aging, declining stamina, confusion, and a growing inability to give a fuck.
Acute, chronic possessional overload is the reason I haven’t published anything since early September.
But I am determined to get my life back. I am going to radically downsize and get rid of a lot of stuff. I’m going to need to bust my hump (a hump already severely downgraded) until I slay this dragon, after which I will be free to write again, but too exhausted to do so.
But, always an optimist, I can see there is hope. Things will get better, and I pray I’m too old and lame to get in this much trouble again.
Yak Shaving
Any seemingly pointless activity which is actually necessary to solve a problem which solves a problem which, several levels of recursion later, solves the real problem you're working on.
origin: MIT AI Lab, after 2000: orig. probably from a Ren & Stimpy episode.
First thing Google Yak Shaving. I think you'll appreciate its relevance to todays post.
Retiredment, how fitting, "I was already tired, now I'm retired."
Merry Christmas