On timers

This morning I woke up to take Anna out to pee around 7:30 am and then crawled back into bed (as is usual on weekends) and couldn't fall back asleep. So I got up and did a load of dishes, did two loads of laundry, made coffee, toasted a bagel, and watched Inside the Actors Studio on youtube (John Goodman...a fellow St. Louisan). Now it's 10:30 and I've realized that pretty much everything I was going to do today is finished. I mean I still want to go to Newflower Farmer's Market and get chicken sausage, hummus, grapes, and maybe some potato salad, but my weekend jobs are pretty much finished (I cleaned the sink yesterday, did the other half of my grocery shopping, bought a frame for my new poster, and picked up my movie from the library that was on hold).

All of this rambling is to say that I'm very task motivated. I find it hard to relax until my tasks are complete, necessary or not. That is to say once I decide I should do some chore for the weekend I don't feel satisfied until it's complete. I find myself building a schedule each morning and then planning when I need to complete everything. All of this strategy is a little exhausting.

Austin as a whole is not task motivated. You'll find brunchers still brunching at noon. It's not unusual to schedule a meeting anywhere with anyone and have them be 15 minutes late. There's a real clear division between on-timers and not on-timers in that the on-timers stand out like that kid in your class that would say, "didn't you say we were going to have a quiz today?"

Summer time is a whole new beast. It's going to be 90 degrees plus all this week meaning that people will be moving even slower and almost every activity involves drinking and/or swimming. For example, this coming week I'll have a trivia night (drinking), a happy hour (drinking), a pool party (swimming and drinking) and a BBQ (more drinking). All of this makes every day here in the summer feels like vacation. Austin has this way of making everything a celebration. This is especially true once May hits. The grocery stores occasionally have live music, there are weekly city-wide social bike rides, I have a large collection of friends that participate in kickball/softball teams (also involving drinking), and the odds are about 90% that if you live in an apartment complex you have a pool.

All of this is to say that I find it very hard to be task oriented here. It just feels silly and meaningless. My years in fast-walking, high heel wearing Chicago seem to be melting off me like so much drunk sweat. And I like it.