Wednesday, 31 July 2002 | Brown construction paper

This evening I've been chewing on the end of a pen, pressing soft calculator buttons that are too close together, jumping from room to room with the tape measure, cursing my country for not going metric, and cutting out tiny rectangles from brown construction paper. I cut the brown paper exactly proportional (I hope) to my furniture, and I've been pushing it around on a blueprint of my new place.

The reason why I use the word "blueprint" is that, while the walls are already there, the pending loft has yet to be built; it is still a ghost image on a piece of paper, still just a stack of wood on the floor of my future apartment.

The reason why I use the word "apartment" is out of habit more than anything. It's actually a loft space in an old mortuary, and I guess it's something like a studio, but with house(?)mates, whose rooms spider off of a shared kitchen.

The reason I need to plan for my furniture at all is so that I can determine what I should take and what I should donate; I've already concluded that much of it is staying behind. At one time that would've bothered me, but I think I'm actually starting to like the idea of losing material weight. Most of it was free anyway; I used to say yes to free furniture like I had a mansion to fill.

The reason I will be glad to see it go is because I find the amount of stuff I'm having to deal with overwhelming. Checking an item off my to-do list barely gives me a nudge of satisfaction these days; if I had to cut out a brown rectangle exactly proportional to one item on my to-do list, it would barely be visible.

I am going to dream about brown construction paper tonight.