Thank God
the Olympics are ending. I mean that literally. I have developed one very nasty habit of turning on
the TV each morning while cleaning dog bowls and making breakfast for 33
animals, knowing full good and well Olympics (while triumph fodder for athletes globally) slows me (locally) to half speed.
My preferred
morning ritual is silence, but given that weather is a big part of farm life,
I’ve rationalized that click of the remote as necessary and as a result, I
mindlessly became addicted to the promos, the teases, the “up next” allure of
all these people living their dreams. Next week, I’m changing my tune, as there
is a definite difference in my thoughts, feelings and my outlook on those days
when I turn the TV off and do my morning routines with love and intention. It’s
what the monks call a waking meditation, and I believe with all my heart that the
energy going into food preparation, is as important as nutrients IN the food itself (if not more so), so now that I’ve backslidden, it’s
time to own up and readjust my sails.
The biggest
part of any farmer’s life (if not every life) is a repeat of recurring habits
and patterns. In my case, this includes cleaning dog bowls, filling water
buckets, mixing food, toting dishes to their respective recipients, etc., etc.
This does not include time consumed picking up each puppy
along the way because they’re so danged adorable, only to do it all over again
with goat babies when outside.
When not
slipping into mindless voyeurism of television coverage that matters not in the
least to my life or that of my critters, I also find repeat rituals the perfect time for one of two mental
exercises 1) Silence: give the hour over to pure prayer, thought,
anticipation/visualization of the day ahead, or 2) Positive Input: be it books on tape or a Marianne Williams lecture, after all, if “garbage
in" means "garbage out” does it not stand to reason that “positive in”
might better my odds of having a “positive outcome” to my day?
Granted we all start out with the same number of hours. Best I can tell, for all our
time saving devices, nobody seems to be saving any. If I can double up-- have my
hands tackling a task while my mind wraps itself around something helpful and
uplifting, why would I not race to do this?
Today, as I
weaned myself off the last of the coverage (Thank you Today Show, for making it easier: I didn’t need to see Savannah
Guthrie playing fake tennis with an ice skater or Al Roker getting a full body
massage, but to be fair, I really didn't need to see all those ski jumpers either.) I reached for the last thing I was reading (i.e. listening to) before
my TV addiction took over...Already I’m feeling better.
The book is SHED, by Julie Morgenstern. The longer title: When Organizing Isn’t Enough SHED Your Stuff, Change Your Life, literally
screamed at me while trading in some used books the other day at McKay’s.
Having
confessed my tendency to keep things past their shelf life in earlier blogs, I
decided I needed to hear what this expert had to say, for clearly, if it were
as simple as just tidying up a corner here or a file drawer there, I’d have done it already. Obviously,
this clutter problem has deeper roots, after all, we’re a nation of consumers and
unless we’re mindful when we’re buying (and I contend most of us aren’t) stuff
coming in has to go somewhere….In my house, it’s usually in a corner.
So what is
the underlying reason I hold onto things? Maybe if Julie here can help me get
beneath the surface and help me understand WHY I (and most Americans) have this
problem, I can turn this mess around.
Until now,
I’ve blamed my basement (my desk, my drawers, my car) on one of three things:
1)
I’m
creative, and creatives, as a rule, are a messy lot. In my radio days I had a
plaque on my desk that read: Creative minds are
seldom tidy; it’s now in a bin somewhere in my garage
because…
2)
I’m
sentimental. From pictures of past radio days now lining walls going
down to the basement: me with President Bush; me doing a telethon; me with
Garth Brooks. Things to remind me that I used to be somebody I guess. Nobody
sees these things but me, and I hung them on basement walls only to keep from moving them one
more time. Still and so, I don’t feel I’m a nobody just for giving up a mic... so why the need to hold onto these memories? (In my upstairs
living quarters, the pictures are mostly of family and friends. These I understand; these stay. I’m not worried about that sentimental tendency.)
3)
I’m
busy. Given the chance to talk with Thurman when he calls (as happens often when planning a garden when looking for windows between storms to get things ready is key) …or turning off my phone
to focus on removing a stack of clutter, well, life wins over stackable
stuff any day. Add to that 7 adorable
puppies, 5 new baby goats and all the other critters I had already carved out
time for before embarking on this journey, and, well,
let’s just say I’m finding I use this excuse way too often these days.
So whatever
Miss Morgenstern has to say about my psyche, I’m all ears. Today, I ponder the question she poses as
I’m scrubbing poop off a basement floor: Who
are you without all your stuff?
Julie makes
some very profound observations as she challenges clients who pay her to help
them re-direct their thinking on these matters. The one that got me through the
dog bowl ritual was “Name your theme.”
According to
Julie, we hold onto things for a reason. Most of us go so fast in our day to
day that we don’t think beneath the surface on why we keep repeating a bad
habit, hoping for a different outcome (that old definition of insanity) but
what’s REALLY going on here?
Julie
suggests for starters, that we trash nothing, but instead, spend a week separating out our treasures.
Sure I want to keep the last Valentine my daddy sent me, but do I really need
to hold onto the unopened heartshape box of candy as well?
I’ve transferred
some 2,000 Beyond Reason radio shows to MP3s, so why can I not bring
myself to trash the original 2,000 cassettes I’m calling “back up”?
Clearly
something in me is holding onto something. Maybe I’m thinking that one day, on my death bed
I’ll go back and listen to myself learning how to craft a question and will
only have a hand held tape recorder to do it on, but honestly, do I not need the space
those tapes are taking up? I mean, seriously....they take up the space of a car, which is why
my Jeep is in the driveway.
My aha moment…
that one thing that led me to believe “I can do this” (maybe not quickly, but I
felt a crack in the iceberg today)…was when Julie suggested I hold each item
I’m contemplating shedding, and FEEL its energy as I ask myself, does this move
me forward or take me backwards? Does it uplift or drag me down? If the item
SLOWS energy (energy I need for projects on the horizon, not the
least of which is a garden, another cookbook and some video production) then I
need to shed it, as it is not enhancing my momentum on the dreams I wish to
live nor is it helping my theme for this chapter of my life.
I can’t do
it in a day (nor was the mess made in a day), but I can do ONE thing a day…A
bin here, a box there. I’m usually pretty good at tackling little goals, so my
decision today, even with all I have on the agenda, is to stop and FEEL—even if
just ONE thing—from a pile of inanimate stuff…the same way I’d stop to FEEL the
love of a puppy or FEEL the nose-nudgings of a baby goat. I’m going to FEEL, to see if
that box of old love letters has any positive vibe for me anymore, cause
quite frankly, I’m not sure why I saved 'em anyway and I think I could FEEL pretty darn
good about having my space back (both in my garage, and in my mind).
By naming a
theme for where we are in our lives…as in “Those were my radio years, these are
my writing years” Julie suggests we have a mental picture against which to
weigh our things…By holding the bigger picture in focus, then holding the clutter
item next to it, it becomes easier to give things a thumbs up or thumbs down
as to whether or not we’re moving toward or away from our goal. I’m sure none of us meant to
allow our old junk—our accumulated past—to get in our way. The challenge as I
see it, is shifting from a state of mindlessness to mindFULness (as became my
habit in watching Olympic coverage, as is similarly my pattern when it comes to
saving the old window treatments from my first apartment).
Julie defines
clutter as “That which no longer serves”~ Boy, if I can wrap my mind around
that one, well gosh darn, Katie Bar the Door!
Neighbor kids spent the night last
night (after all, we only have so many more puppy-cuddling hours) meaning
mornings got started a tad bit late (but with extra lovin’ farm hands on hand,
so that part was good). Friends I’d been meaning to catch up with…we finally caught
up (nothing like a cloud of puppies to make promised intentions become reality).
In between were farm-type errands: rooms to clear, towels to wash, errands to run (dog food, goat chow, and people-groceries for when neighbor kids
and friends come by next time) …Again, life’s a cycle, not a line.
But the funniest part of all was
when my neighbor (whose yard Rosey considers part of her turf to protect) came
over to bring the goats leftover bread and cereal. It had barely turned dark;
all I know is while shifting pups from cutely padded nursery rooms to outdoor barns and
cedar bedding, I saw a figure come down my drive, the likes of which set the
big dogs off to barking ferociously.
