Let's face the music....and daydream

If you read my blog yesterday you will know that I reported a bit of an unpleasant 'Aha!' moment. A kind of 'Aha!' I'm a disgrace to society and I am wasting my life!' kind of moment, except deeper and more profound.

I am still kind of curious about it, having never experienced anything like that before and wondering whether it could have been due to less than 8 hours of beauty sleep. But the shock of seeing my life in all it's glory - which if I remember rightly seemed to consist largely of me sitting on the sofa, daydreaming about all of the wonderful things I was going to do once I got myself together (and not before) whilst people in need of my capabilities were losing out because I was 'fannying around' (technical term) - had quite a profound effect. As it would, I guess.

So yesterday I was back in the house and it was the first day of the New Moon of Aries, which deals with the energy of the month of Aries. Deal with this day in the right way, and you are injecting energy at the seed level in to the entire month. Well, I can do that.

The 'Tips for the month of Aries' in my little "preparation for Pesach" book advise me to 'Look to complete things' and 'Remember the past to avoid repeating mistakes' and my plan for the day was to clear away the negative energy in the house. I wanted to do the following:

• clear out the second bedroom of boxes, books and clothes that I wanted to sell (as the second bedroom was starting to stress me out with clutter);
  
• wash the bedlinen (which is no mean feat given that it is winter and I only have one set of bedlinen so need to get it done in one day);
• dust and vacuum the house, finally sucking up the dead leaves that I carted all of the way up the stairs on Sunday, and left there;
• clean the bathroom and the kitchen, including the floors, with the aim of trying not to kill anything that might now be living there (like my new spider next to the bath - Jim).

As usual, I left it too late to complete the list. For more than the first half of the day I was struggling with my sinuses and waiting for the snot to settle. And of course, I underestimated simple tasks like taking all of the items that I wanted rid of to the back room, which involved dragging out the stepladder and traipsing up to the loft to find a suitable box to carry everything in (which then meant that I had to vacuum the bedroom floor for a second time to suck up the loft fluff stuck to the boxes..)

But despite this massive insight of "I must change my habits" I was still dragging my heels - despite listening to my favourite playlist, I was uninspired.

By 5:30 pm, I was no way near halfway through the list and I sat down to take stock. And then it struck me - I was playing the wrong damned music!! How could I be so stupid?! No wonder I wasn't getting anywhere!! I was playing my dreamy future vision playlist which includes:

1. "Coming Around Again" by Simon Webb, which I match with a vision of my sister or I (or us both) stepping out on stage to inspire a theatre full of people with our wit and insight,
   
2. "Ain't No Longer Asking" by Dodgy, which I match with a vision of us coming off the stage at the end of the show and signing books for all of our 'fans' (with utter humility and modesty, of course - no Egos here...)
   
3. "You Baby" by Neil Diamond (from the Jazz Singer) which is of course being sung to me by the man of my dreams at a Karaoke session (which just isn't going to happen because I hate Karaoke and anyway the man of my dreams doesn't yet have a face which is kind of creepy..)
4. "Gimme More" by Britney Spears - a simple dancing fantasy where I spot new man of dreams across the dance floor, get eye contact, and mime "I see you.... an' I just wanna dance with you.." before he sweeps me off my feet (what anyone is supposed to do with the words "it's Britney, Bitch", I am not yet sure. Is 'Britney' meant to be a state of mind? I mean, what is the point of this song if you are not meant to use the opening words on the dance floor?)
   
5. "Let's Face the Music (and Dance)" by Nat King Cole. I have tried to work out how I would dance to this music and visualise it frequently. Perhaps a Quickstep with a smattering of Lindy Hop - neither of which I can do - hence the daydream.

I selected the playlist purely to give me some motivation to change, believing that I would not have to give up my daydreaming in order to get things done but instead that focusing on the future and therefore the whole reason for performing these mundane tasks would actually be a distraction from the process of doing them.

Wrong.

Brainwave.

(Lesson today: Learn from your past to avoid repeating mistakes in the future).

Hmm, now let me think..... Bentley Rhythm Ace.

I was introduced to Bentley Rhythm Ace ten years ago when at university and shared a house with a cooler and younger chick than I (which wasn't difficult, to be honest). We shared the house with two lazy men and a shedding dog, and every once in a while when the fluff got too prolific, Amanda ('mandaaaa') would stick on Bentley Rhythm Ace and we would get cleaning. And once the CD was playing it felt as though anything was possible - even cleaning the dog yack from the gaps between the tiles on the half-finished kitchen floor.

I found the album on my iPod and pressed Play... I was off! Boxes out of loft! Boxes in to back room! Vacuum the back bedroom! Second pass at vacuuming my bedroom (loft fluff, remember?), cleaning the loo like a wasp on speed, whizz, whizz, whoosh.

And because the songs are mainly instrumental, with the occasional commentary ("Have you ever been tickled, and laughed like this? Have you laughed 'til the tears ran down your cheeks?" and "Let's put on our dancing shoes" and even better "Who put the bom in the bombomtiddlybom? Who put the bom in the bombomtiddleybom bom bom bom tiddley bom put the bom in the bom bom...") it doesn't seem to matter how often they are played.

In fact, it seems as though you press play and download some freaky force from the Universe. It was the strangest change in energy: Plug In. Switch On Automatic Pilot. Go.

So there is a lesson learned for future cleaning bursts.

Last night I dialled in to the Kabbalah midnight teleconference to hear all about the New Moon of Aries - Taurus energy, which, in case you are interested, is all about going outside of your comfort zone, all day today. Which I am hoping isn't a prediction for how my new shoes are going to feel on the dance floor tonight.

But the first instruction for the day was to get up earlier than usual and pull your feet out of bed before you have a chance to think 'I'll just press snooze'. I ended up going to bed at nearly 2am and set my alarm for 6:30, determined to make the effort. Oddly enough, I was awake a few minutes before the alarm went off, and I did indeed sit bolt upright before Neil Diamond drew his first opening breath through my iPod alarm clock.

And so here I am, drivelling my usual nonsense, but just at an earlier hour.