Example: I’ve been meaning to organize, reduce, and clean up my financial records for some time. I had a giant pile on my living room chair that piled up for over a year of old bills and other things I needed to keep, I had a filing cabinet full of stuff I mostly no longer needed, and I had a couple binders full of stuff that could be pruned significantly.

I have been unemployed for seven months, yet just in the last few days have I actually managed to make real progress in going through all this stuff. I shredded an entire trash bag worth of shit between last night and this morning (well, this afternoon, since last night I broke my old shredder and had to get a new one this morning).

And why am I finally making progress? Because I have to study for the GREs. Yes, because I have something else that I really, really don’t want to do (ie. relearn a whole shitload of math), this thing that I’ve been meaning to do but is kind of a pain in the ass suddenly becomes a much more attractive option.

I may not be getting done what needs to get done sooner, but I’m getting SOMETHING done, dammit.

The problem is, flea-bombing is a stupidly elaborate and time-consuming process, since it has a tendency to cover everything in a sticky, disgusting, chemical-filled film. You therefore have to cover some stuff up in advance, and wash a lot more stuff off afterwards.

I’m also working ridiculously late (or early, depending on your perspective). Our crew call was really late, and my call was 5:30 PM. That means they expect to be shooting until at least 5:30 AM. You know it’s going to be a long night when the thing that will cause filming to stop is the sunrise.

All that in mind, here is my rough schedule for the next 36 hours:

Now-6AM: Work in my office where they’ve turned off the air conditioning. Possibly longer.

6-7AM: Drive back to Santa Monica, try to obtain a flea fogger at Ralph’s (the grocery store).

7-8AM: Prepare apartment for fogging by putting all open food and dishes in either the fridge or the dishwasher and sealing.

8AM-9AM: Drop Chaplin off for flea dip, go to pet store and get flea fogger if Ralph’s didn’t have one.

9:30 AM – Set off flea fogger. Flee to Nate’s house and take a nap for 2-3 hours while flea fogger does its bit.

12 Noon-1PM – Go home, open windows and let apartment air out.

1PM-2PM – Return to Nate’s and napping, let apartment finish airing out.

2PM-3PM – Retrieve cat from groomers, take him home. Start to clean up.

3PM-9PM – Continue cleaning and laundering. Probably pass out from exhaustion. Hopefully will not die from whatever toxic fumes remain in my apartment.

9PM-11PM – Wake up, realize I never made it to the gym and that now I have to go in the morning. Finish cleaning.

11PM-6AM – Sleep.

6AM-9AM – Get up, go to the gym, go to work.

If I don’t post for several days, send help.

You know how, when you move, there’s always a few boxes that never actually get unpacked until you move again, and you wonder, what’s in here that is actually worth moving?

I unpacked those two boxes today. Turns out the answer was: not much.

I also went through my magazine and newspaper collection and threw out anything that wasn’t of legitimate historical value, meaning about 95% of the batch is now in the dumpster.

Let me back up for a second: I’ve had several boxes of old magazines that I kept around for years (as in, the oldest one I found was the issue of Newsweek right after the ’95 Oklahoma City bombing).

I’ve dragged these boxes all over the country, since my mother moved out of the house I grew up in and into a much smaller condo, depriving me of much-needed storage space.

I started hanging onto this stuff after my dad showed me a newspaper he’d kept from the day Kennedy was shot, something I found really fascinating. I wanted to save similar stuff for the future.

But I went a little overboard: I saved dozens of issues of Guitar World, Rolling Stone, and other magazines that really are of no use to anyone. I saved every Oscar issue of Entertainment Weekly. I saved everything even moderately historic from Newsweek.

I’d long considered selling the collection on eBay, but when I went to look online today at what I might actually get for some of these magazines (answer: very little to nothing), I decided to just pitch them.

So I went through, saving a very few truly historical items, but otherwise pitching everything. I threw out four bankers’ boxes worth of crap.

What’s funny is that when I checked my email after doing that, there was email from my dad, who’d been looking for my Social Security card. He didn’t find it, but he did find a massive pile of other stuff, including correspondence from summer camp, report cards from elementary school, and various other pack-rat items.

At least I know where the hoarding instinct comes from.

After that, I went through the aforementioned drag-around boxes, digging up dozens of documents that needed to be shredded, and a whole lot of trash.

I wound up with so much stuff to shred that two things happened: First, my shredder overheated badly enough to be unusable for about an hour. Second, I filled a medium-sized moving box completely with the shredded remains of all that paper.

My bedroom is now almost disturbingly clean, and my cat is really, really confused, since all his hiding places are gone. I’ve kicked up enough dust to be sneezing like a madwoman, but it’s nice to feel like I’ve actually made progress on something.

Tomorrow, I’m attacking the living room. I expect to finish filling the dumpster sometime in the next couple of weeks.