Summer Cleaning

It's amazing what cleaning can do for my motivation. Whenever I feel like I'm getting lazy or wasting a lot of time, cleaning my apartment/room always seems to put me in the right frame of mind again. I guess it's just putting myself in the right state of mind--when my place is a mess, I feel like some of it carries over and affects my mental state. Thus, a clean apartment sort of clears the slate for me, freeing my mind on a small psychological level (it's also nice having a clean apartment to stretch out in...). I'm not the only one that feels this effect right?

I've dedicated this weekend to cleaning--and I mean more than just my apartment. I mentioned before I'm taking a break from poker to get other aspects of my life back on the right track. I'm by no means secure financially, but I should be OK for the next few weeks while I get myself situated. Unfortunately the 7-day detox fast has to be pushed back until at least next week, but that won't stop me from going grocery shopping at Harvest, Whole Foods or Trader Joes (all conveniently nearby) this weekend. Also going to try to cut down on my alcohol consumption...spent wayyy too much money on booze last weekend (though it was my bday).

On a happy note...I'm reading a LOT again. Probably the most I've read since Middle School, which doesn't say a lot about how much I read after...

Current reads/views include "Blood Meridian," "One Hundred Years of Solitude," a book of short stories and essays by Jorge Luis Borges (one of my all-time favorite writers), "Stop Making Sense" (Talking Heads doc by Demme) and "The Waking Life" if I can ever get it to work in my roommate's PS2...our only way of playing DVDs at the moment. It's SHIT for reliability. Also watched "Paprika" again recently..don't care what anyone says, I love that movie.

Finally have some movies I need to see in theaters too. Aside from the new HP movie, "Funny People" comes out soon, and I still need to see "The Hangover". Saw "500 Days of Summer" the other day...pretty good--I read the script while I was at my internship in LA, and I think it was executed about as well as it could have been for what the script was. Joseph Gordon Levitt--who I'm a fan of--was great, and Zooey Dechansel was cute and hatable at the same time, something I wasn't sure if she could pull off.

But nowww I'm getting critical and spouting off things that pop into my head, so I'll leave you with this:

Had a huge argument with my parents the other night about my future/our financial problems, which left me feeling pretty shitty and angry, but I still have a lot of hope for the next month and a half before me lease is up. No sense in getting upset about things I can't really control at the moment, so I might as well get the most out of the little I have right now. Got my movies, got my books, got my peeps, got Boston, got music, got Summer weather (finally...please stay!), got my running shoes, got my notebooks and my screenwriting software, and still got my ambitions (which reminds me, I just started working on a comic strip tentatively called "Mud"--still looking for an illustrator though cus my drawing skills are pretty poor)...hm quite a lot now that I look at it...

Definitely on a high cloud today...ah nothing like a little house-cleaning, yeah?

(NOTE: Once I get a few strips finished from the new comic, I'll post on this blog or another. I have several written, just looking for someone to draw...or maybe I'll try my hand...we'll see. Post the synopsis here eventually so check back soon!)