live by the advice i give to others

.. go out and buy an ice-cream! Right, I’m off. Something choclatey I think.

Yesterday morning i finally summed up the determination required to sit my housemates down and advise them on living a bit more like me. Ok, thats in reverse to this goal but it was a crucial moment in my domestic life. And I know it sounds terribly narcississtic but it relates to the fact that I am the only one in the house who seems to care about house-hygiene.
Since the lads moved in last xmas it has been coming more and more apparent that they are absolutely useless at cleaning up around the house. Many, many, many moments of hair-wrenching frustration later and I finally laid everything on the table. It feels wonderful.
I got to say things like; “Its not ok to live in a house for a year and not know where the broom is” and “putting stuff in the bin is easy – gravity does most of the work for you”.
Dave took it quite well, getting very enthusiastic about his idea about making a chart where we all log our cleaning efforts. But Dave does tend to get excited talking about things – doing them is another matter entirely. Mike just got very quiet, nodded a lot and drifted away into his thoughts. Mike is the kind of guy whose solution to the problem of washing dirty dishes would involve various strategies for eleminating the actual dishes themselves rather than cleaning them.
As i leave for New York on tuesday it will be fascinating to see what i return to 10 days later. I expect that I wiil come home to one hour of frenzied cleaning tacked on to the end of 9 days and 23 hours of slobbery. We shall see…

..given my flatmates the advice of stopping being such lazy, useless bastards, i would dearly love to. And so, in the spirit of this goal i applied it to myself and went out this morning and bought a new curtain rail for the front room. The old one was one of those draw-string numbers that has been crocked for over a year, which means we just leave the curtains open all the time.
Advantages; You can see the pizza guy coming – Disadvantages; Everyone on the street can see what crap television we watch.
But now we have a spanking new curtain rail with smooth-moving curtains attached. I am ridiculously pleased with myself. Especially because i fitted it without the aid of a step-ladder. A lot of chair/windowsill balancing involved in that I can tell you.

..i got into a dusk till dawn conversation with an old friend about our work, during which i found myself admitting that i didnt much enjoy my job anymore. She advised me to take 6 months outand see where it leads me. I will come to the end of my current work contract on nov 10th and i have advised myself to heed her advice. The problem is that each time i land a new job a flicker of excitement occurs. I get seduced by the short term nature of it and the warm feeling of being wanted.
This week i took a stand and turned down a job that would take me through xmas and into the new year. Its a start at listening to the real me as opposed to the me that pays the bills.
I’m aware that the me that pays the bills is a handy guy to have around but he’s not the only guy in the room.

I found myself sitting on Roger’s back steps today.
“If it looks like I’m having a mental breakdown….its because I’m having a mental beakdown”
Its not that he didnt look like he was having a mental breakdown, more that he always looks like hes having a mental breakdown – hard to tell sometimes. He’s a creative guy, Roger. He writes and produces radio series and is having a hard time dealing with our national broadcasters who, in the manner of large corporations have their own priorities and agendas.
We discussed money and art and all that jazz. I ended up telling him he needs to find a new outlet for his material. Anyhow, i thought i might let people know about his website which is www.crazydogaudiotheatre.com Check it out, its quite cool.

I’ve been giving loads of advice recently. Mostly older guy to younger guy stuff. And mostly to do with getting stuff done and not sitting around waiting for things to happen. I’m doing ok at that stuff myself these days. Nothing earth shattering, just getting on with things instead of thinking and fretting about not doing things! I am perfectly capable of doing absolutely nothing for weeks on end if I let myself. And thats just pants.

If i were to advise myself now i would say; “you have a job pitch tomorrow. Why dont you get your act together and prepare for it so you can make some money in order to be able to afford all the things you want to do in your life instead of pissing around on the internet”.
if i said this i would definitely listen to myself and immediately log off and prepare for my job pitch.

Presume it is a common thing to be able to give sound advice on the crises of others yet get utterly bowled over by your own. Sometimes, in times of stress, I feel that if only I had myself for an advisor I would be okay. I’ve tried advising myself but usually find my advising-self to be unconvincing. Is my advice to others crap? Or do I need to give myself more credit? If I give myself advice in a forest and no-one is there to hear it, have i advised myself at all?