Life a Mess? Clean Your Room!

Yeah, I have a “case of the Moondays“ (Take your pick with those clips). Just do not feel like being at work a) It is cutting into my web 2.0 time b) I have a paper to write for night class tonight. I definitely feel a little out of wack today as well as stressed out.

However, this feeling takes me back to this summer to a point where I was really going nuts. Back around June I was going through a bunch stuff with relationships, home, and work. Pretty much everything in my life felt like it was piling on top of me. I could not sit still without having my mind race at 1,000 MPH. I would talk to a few friends about it seeking advice and they all just told me to try to relax and do things that take my mind off it all. To make it all worse, my finances were all over the place. Credit card debt was mounting and I was not prioritizing paying off any of my debts.

One Saturday I was at home and decided to clean my room and that two hours I spent in my room absolutely changed me! I tore up my entire bedroom and just started throwing stuff away. I was filling up garbage bags and boxes full of old junk: Trading cards, old homework, books, toys (Yes I had toys in my room), magazines, and useless objects (Google lava lamp). I went through a ton of old clothing and tried stuff on and gave all the stuff I would not wear to goodwill. I was moving stuff around and cleaning out everything.

For some odd reason, going through all these old things had a very calming effect on me. Maybe it was the fact I was reminiscing about old memories associated with these items? Or maybe because the act of cleaning things up and putting things back in place actually set my head back in place? I can not explain why, but I urge you to try it for yourself. I really hope you were never in the same state of mind that I was experiencing, but I do know that I made it out of it because of that day.

From that weekend on my room has been cleaner and I have been calmer. During my teenage years, whenever I was down or out of it, I would take my basketball outside and just go dribble around the block or down the street or whatever the ball took me. I am older now and resorted to cleaning, because it would be pretty awkward seeing a 25 year old man dribbling a ball between his legs in the middle of the night right? You would probably call the cops on me!

How do you cope with stress that pulls you down into a depressive state? What activities make it all go away?

The irony in all of this? It was a few weeks later after that for when I started blogging! Pretty crazy seeing it all come full circle. It all popped in my head this morning when I was getting ready for work. Everything happens for a reason!