Living in the real world & Trucker Tales

I have some problems with living in the real world.

This may surprise some of you who know me, but number 1 by far is keeping my apartment clean. In college I lived in a tiny room which contained tons of stuff but was a cinch to keep clean. The fact that I had so little space forced me to constantly maintain it so I never had to do huge all-day cleaning jobs except when I was moving out at the very end of the year. Now I've upgraded to an apartment, which isn't huge, but is at least 4 times bigger than the dorm rooms I used to live in.

My apartment has a kitchen, living room, separate dining room, bathroom, and bedroom. The bedroom is about twice the size of my old single dorm room. The problem with having all this space to myself is that I don't have to see messes all the time. If my bedroom is messy, I can just walk to the living room. The point is the mess doesn't impair my movement whereas in the dorm room, if I had some clothes on the floor I wouldn't be able to function.

So the cycle that happens is as follows...we start on the weekend, I usually attempt to clean my apartment which means picking up clothes, throwing away trash, doing dishes, cleaning the bathroom or vacuuming. It takes me the entire weekend to do this because I never do it continuously. I'm always shuttling back and forth between cleaning and the TV or the computer. So by the end of the weekend my apartment is clean...then I start the work week. When I come back from work I cook and I usually end up with way too many dirty pots/pans/utensils. After I eat I don't feel like doing the dishes so I let them sit. Then the next day when I need to cook, I add to the pile. It gets worse and worse because I run out of utensils and then if I get really lazy I just eat out. This may happen the entire work week and thus the cycle returns.

The impact of this cycle isn't just felt in what I eat...it impacts what I do on weekends too. So once it's the weekend I realize this is the time I have to clean...so when someone proposes going out or doing something social I feel reluctant because I have such a messy apartment. Also, it prevents me from having people over. It's a terrible cycle and I'm so aware of it, yet I can't seem to stop it.

I am really lacking in self-discipline when it comes to this.

Sorry if this post is disjointed I'm playing Literati as I write this. I'm talking to my opponent who has an interesting story. Since I don't know him it could all be made up, but as far as I care it's real. After all, he has nothing to gain from making this up.

So this is his story:
He graduated from Virginia Tech with a degree in Electrical Engineering. For those who don't know VT is a good engineering school and a degree in EE should easily lead to a job with moderately big bucks. Anyway, he says he worked in construction doing residential wiring (this part kinda makes me suspicious because I don't know if EEs would be employed doing such menial things. I'm not sure if residential wiring is menial, but it sounds like it is to me.)

But he doesn't like the work, so he becomes a truck driver where he has no boss essentially. So being a truck driver you are out on the road for long periods of time, he claims he's gone 2/4 weeks each month. So one day he comes home to a "Dear John" letter and his wife has left him for another man. Worse yet, she's pregnant with this other guy's child. AND...the son the trucker had with his now ex-wife was taken by her as well due to the fact that he's on the road all the time!

So basically this guy lost his wife and his son...all thanks to his ex-wife. It's a tragic story.

He told me this saying of truckers "The road never lets ya' forget." It must be hard to have to think about all this stuff when you're sitting alone in the cab of a truck for weeks on end with nothing to comfort you but the miles rolling by.

Anyway, that's a sad story even if it's not true.