Back, But So Much Has Changed

Internet,

How long has it been?  Too long!  But so very much has changed.  I’m now married to the Historian, and made the shift from NorCal to SoCal.  There’s much I could say about the large geographical shifts — on both physical and emotional terrains — but I’ll come back to my focus about building a home, trying to declutter, and build myself to a next plateau.

After merging households, and trying to figure out who had more books, (it’s a draw), we’re still finding our way into household management.  After an initial foray into whittling down my belongings to fit into our space, and the one precious (but small) room I’m using for a study, I’ve relaxed into what I call “the drift,” meaning things are piling up and I’ve lost that initial, special view that you get when you are in a new place, again physical and otherwise.

So… my post is a start, a toe dipped back into trying to steer myself towards the kind of life I so want to have at home.  I’m hoping that clarity around the piles of paper and stuff will lead to clarity around other goals, wanting to entertain and simply enjoy the space more.  Making a home together in a way we’re still figuring out.  Internet, hope your encouragement or at least public display will draw me forward, ever closer to these goals.

Back in Order

Ach! So overdue! I feel like I’ve too long neglected this blog. And the apartment. But it has been a six-week whirlwind of summer travel. Was at Yaddo for almost three blessed weeks, NJ (with my brother’s family) a few days prior, then Miami (my hometown) with parents and the Historian (who came for part of the visit) for almost a week more. All told, away from Berkeley for about a month. Was back for about ten just barely recuperating days (and straight back to work) before the Historian came to visit and we went (for a b-day treat! so nice) to Half-Moon Bay, so more micro-packing and unpacking, repacking and unpacking once again. Then, the following weekend (last) I was off to the National Women’s Studies Conference outside Chicago for their annual meeting. It was great, but I could tell how reluctant I felt to travel once more, connecting flights, new time zone, shoes off at the checkpoint, groggy late-night arrivals and departures.

I really do love to travel, but have hit the saturation point. And I want to use the summer to settle in and get my own work done!

Another adventure has been the drama around whether or not my summer class would hit its minimum and “make” as we say in academe or be cancelled. It just squeaked by, so now I’ve finished week two of teaching, but this also led to a flurry (not over) of sudden preparation.

So, all to say there’s been a lack of steady focus in my life, and lack of time at home to work on these projects. But I’m ready to get back. Step one was to run an ad on CL for an organizer. I liked the woman I worked with very much, but have to admit I just can’t afford a professional organizer’s rate right now (even modified ones). I posted Monday (day after arrival back) and have been amazed at the wonderful responses pouring in. So many talented people out there, or so it seems. It will be hard to winnow it down. But having someone to help me down this path seems key, and a way to build structured decluttering time into my schedule.

One other thought I’ve had of late (as my b-day in late June carried me over into a new decade threshhold) was that I want to have an apartment which is beautifully presented to others — I enjoy decorating, living in an aesthetic space, the joy of coming home to an environment which is nourishing and others can feel comfortable in too. I’ll never want to do a lot of cleaning, and have to remember creating that environment takes time, but something about realizing that’s a goal to work towards seems helpful.

Meanwhile, looks like moving is on the back burner, at least until mid-fall, which gives some more time. But I’d still love to make the kitchen area, all BOOKS (!), closets and attendant stashes of jewelry, coats, etc. a goal for summer’s end. Would love to add in boxes stashed in landlord’s attic, but that might be overly optimistic. But goal-setting always seems good to me. Now acting on it is the next step. For this weekend: trying to focus in on interviewing organizers, taxes (yes, still) and getting things up off the floor.
And thinking about more steady progress for the next six weeks at least.

Post-Whirlwind

Well, the last of the visitors are now gone, as of yesterday, and I have to admit that last night I felt pretty bereft.  It was great to have the Historian here for the whole week and to be domestic together.  We cooked a Passover dinner, went to the grocery store, Target, did errands, all sorts of “usuals” we usually don’t get when we’re just together for the weekend.  But, indeed, his visit did inspire me to break out the white file boxes and dump stuff in them just to clear space on the floor (and couch and shelves) and create a semblance of order.  Now, how/when to go back?

And my Mom’s visit was great — it was wonderful to have her out here and make me realize how much I long to see her.  More to say on that topic and how I’ve been thinking about family of late, but that’s really another thread altogether.

The great news is that she came out to Berkeley on Sunday and in the space of five hours helped me to entirely clean out my closet.  Closet, big chest of drawers, and little chest of drawers where I store sweaters.  Plus, we went through my shoes, old purses, belts, coats closet, everything.  The result?  About eight big black garbage bags full o’stuff to donate.

Where I don’t want to get tripped up (but might) is with the desire to try and ebay some of my more expensive stuff and make a bit of a profit.  Haven’t ever done that before, and might try to consecrate a space of time to try, but I don’t want to have it be a project which delays action for too much longer.  The other worry that will slow down the process of moving everything out the door?  I do want to go back through the maybes and take a second look.  Mom moves fast, and any hesitation over keeping an article of clothing she interpreted to be enough to toss it in the bag.  I’m more judicious (generally speaking) about throwing things out, but also realize that that’s how I got to have such a stuffed space in the first place.  I have to admit it felt like a miracle this morning to open the closet and see vast amounts of space there, an adjustment certainly, but not a bad one to make.

Now, my new goals are to keep going — to finish out the closet thoroughly this weekend (or by the one following) as I want to follow through with jewelry and the catch-all space of the shelf above the clothes, then ebay or not, but move things out the door.  By mid-May (not all that far) I want to finish out the kitchen, bath, and ideally, books too.  Oh, and taxes!  To my regret, it looks like I’ll be filing an extension again, which makes me a bit frustrated.  But, to my credit, I feel like if I hadn’t had guests, I would have filed on time.  I’ve never gotten everything all together to calculate expenses as early as I have this year, and I take that as a small sign of progress.  Would also like the car cleaned out (trunk & junk!) before leaving as well.

It’s all in theory, of course, and it definitely feels encouraging to have this running jumpstart, but how to stay steady with it on my own, of course, is another matter.

In other news, some talk is underway about moving (forward and that means moving), so I like to think of this as real motivation, but that’s another post as well.

A final thought as I regroup and regather towards my myriad projects that I’ve put on hold while having guests…. I want to be better at doing one big thing per day and having it done.  I feel chagrined of late at how long projects seem to gestate for me and I want to move more quickly with things.  But that is another thread altogether.  Best sign off and try for a good night’s sleep.  It will be an intense catch-up week ahead.

More Prepwork

Still thinking more about why I want to do this — I hope (ultimately) in order to be more clear (no pun intended) about my motivations.

As mentioned, in this class I once took on “clutter cleaning” the instructor kept asking why or what we were each letting our clutter keep us from — the guy who wanted to start his own home business but could never clear off his desk, the woman who claimed she wanted to have friends over for a dinner party but her dining room table was perpetually loaded with stuff. I thought she (the instructor) was particularly hard on those who claimed they wanted romantic relationships but couldn’t bring themselves to invite anyone into their homes for fear of embarrassment.

Her other mantra was “when you get clear, miracles happen!” And she had tons of anecdotes about someone finding a tiny slip of paper with a phone number, calling it, and then marrying its owner, or getting a job that way, or making a move (on multiple levels). In this sense, I suspect she’s right. Not about the insta-miracles necessarily, but about how living and moving in harmony with your space facilitates more ease, more contentment, even confidence, and overall, more focus in manifesting what you want in the world.

But how to apply this to my own projects? I realize, for one, on the heels of AWP, I want to get serious about a second book. And I know I have half-written poem ideas buried in computer files, in scraps on my desk, under piles of paper, in boxes, etc. That bothers me. I’d like to centralize them. I’d like to meditate more fully on their connections; I’d like to coax them into clearer, stronger existences. And I can’t do that when they’re scattered, buried, quasi-lost and might only be randomly found.

Then I think about my own relationship to my surroundings. I realize I absolutely DO prefer being in clean, aesthetic, harmonious-feeling spaces. And when my apartment is closer to that state I’m much happier. There’s a kind of edgy, can’t-take-care-of-myself as I’d like pall that envelops after walking in the door when the apartment is literally a mess, and an apologia I give to guests (although I realize it doesn’t keep me from having people over), that I feel obliged to chant. I’m not completely proud or content to live like this, and I think that’s the biggest clue that things should change, rather than wondering if I’m caving to societal expectations for cleanliness, for women, for what a living room should look like. I realize I naturally prefer a clean and harmonious space. And it irritates me to no end when I can’t find things. And I’ve also realized I like to decorate. When I’ve spent time on home improvement projects I’ve always enjoyed both the act and payoff. So, there, more motivation to note.

The instructor of said course used to emphasize getting to what she called “ground zero” — a term, absolutely in New York City, I imagine she’s since had to revise — where you’ve battled through your boxes of clutter, emptied each closets heaped with detritus, and everything is as it should be down to the bottom of each drawer, pile, floor space. Can’t say that I think I’ll ever necessarily get to that place — or at least stay there long — but working my way through the backlog, and not adding to it at the very least, does seem the thing to do right now.

My other motivation is that I might be moving. Too much to go into right now on that topic, and it wouldn’t be till the summer’s end, but I do think that if I start now I have a fighting chance of not paying (literally, whether using movers or doing it myself) for all of this accumulation by lugging stuff along I really don’t need. So that’s another clear motivation I can identify.

I’ll never be someone who wants to live in spare, neo-modern spaces. Nope, that’s not me. There’s a coldness that I feel when I’m in that sort of area, and a lack of… spark? that I don’t want. I enjoy a certain kind of creative chaos, and in fact, have been much pleased to see a recent spate of books which eschew utter neat classification and organization in preference for a sort of fertile cross-pollination of ideas. But, (again), I realize I don’t like getting into people’s junky cars (or my own when it gets that way), or being in a living room where the seat needs to be cleared off before someone can sit down. So, a balance has to be struck.

As for starting for real, however, I think I’m going to go with books. Post-AWP, I’ve brought back new armloadsful, and even I can realize I have plenty I haven’t looked at in years. Paperwork is something I think I need more encouragement for, but the books (even as it pains me to say it), I think I can do on my own, and another motivation (need to get as many in as I can!) is that I might make a bit of $$ by bringing them to my local bookstore. And I’m desperate for any additional sources of income at this time. So, books it is, concurrently followed by tax work. Each year I take an extension and then still run up against that deadline. Getting a refund (happily, always the case, although it’s really because I’m so poor), also motivates and I know I would be proud of myself for doing this on time this year. And, ideally, although taking on too much at once is one of my hallmarks, sifting through my computer files to glean out the poems that I’ve begun and at least electronically, begin sorting out the materials for this next book, is another goal.

So, here are some places to start — fifteen minutes at a time.

Gearing Up

I’ve been thinking more and more about why I want to attempt this task. My “newly home” goggles are now off — too immersed in my daily life of teaching, writing, thinking, to see the clutter as I first did, but there’s still a lot to reflect on.

For one, the mention of a friend’s tragedy. Just about two weeks ago I got an email from an old friend announcing that she had to fly off to New York because her brother-in-law had dopped dead of a heart attack at age 44. The tragedy of it all is tremendous — two young daughters left behind — a wife — the shock of a relatively young life cut short. But one thing my mind jumped to was, Did he have all of his papers in order? This resonates in multiple ways. For one, my parents (knock wood) who are in good shape have made it very clear that they have everything organized all of their “important papers,” with explicit instructions about their wills. I think that’s really a blessing for a child — struck with mourning and grief — to be able to fulfill a parent’s wishes and honor them, and not be sorting through piles of paper at such a confusing time, wondering what to do next or where things are.

A corresponding example to this occured when I was recently in LA and visiting with a friend (briefly) whose 92-year-old father’s house had suddenly flooded. He, his brother and sister were working round the clock to sort out a lifetime’s worth of papers, books, and detritus. His father was a retired philosophy professor so that paper count was high — to say the least! — and something I can relate to. Still alive, and able to say where he wanted his things donated and who got what, etc., it was still clear to me that to not have things in order, (G-d forbid in case of emergency), puts a tremendous burden on others.

I’m hovering around 40, single but dating someone seriously, and live with my two cats. I don’t like to think about it, but if I do, what would happen to all of my stuff if something happened suddenly (G-d forbid) to me? Would my work be treated with attention and honor? Would I be placing an undue burden on those left behind? This is not my usual screen of thoughts, but said friend’s wake-up call and even the stunning sight of other friend’s days of labor (done and still ahead) sorting out his father’s boxes do seem like serious things to think about. I even had the feeling the LA experience was meant to serve as some sort of aversion therapy 🙂

A related but different strain as to why it’s important to have things in order: Years ago, when I was living in New York City I read an article in the New York Times about a class on “clutter control” at a Learning Annex-type of place. I signed right up. Once I got to the class it was as if I had found “my people.” There we all were — the savers-of-string-for-“someday,” the stacks of old New York Times and New Yorkers folks, too concerned about throwing one issue out until we had scoured each for any wonderful articles we might miss, ignoring the fact that it’s impossible to lead a full life and keep up, the old-clothes mavens, the unfinished projects people, those who suffered perennially from what flylady calls “can’t have anyone over syndrome.” More later (I’m sure) on the philosophy and ideas of the teacher, but one of her tenets was that things store power and memories, and you needed, absolutely needed, to maintain an active relationship with the things you placed around you.

One day the issue of “important papers” came up and someone asked if you weren’t setting yourself up for risk if you centralized all of your credit card statements, bank info, wills, etc. And her wry anyswer was that you weren’t foiling thieves, really, by deliberately keeping everything a mess, awry, on the floor. She reiterated something similiar to what I’ve been thinking about — that it’s responsible, a gift, etc. to be prepared, not only so that your own wishes are honored, but it’s also a gift you give to others. Not to dwell too much on this theme this morning, but it makes sense to me as another motivating factor to get and keep (!) things in better order.

Caught a few minutes last night of Suze Orman’s infomercial about women and money (whole other topic), but one of her tenets towards being in good financial control and feeling empowered was maintaining cleanliness in your life. At first, I was taken slightly aback (and am not sure I really agree this should be such a high priority), but her comment that you need to “be clear” and her specific mention “you need to clear away the clutter” to be honest about your financial situation and move forward with new financial goals also rang true to me. One of my former teacher’s principles was that clutter let you hide behind it, or obscure certain goals. While I don’t entirely buy into this (I think there’s another perspective to be had about creative chaos), I give some credit to their points. Again, what I think is important is to figure out my relationship to wanting to “be clear” and in terms of knowing where critical documents are, I can agree, easily, they should be easy to find and safely stored.

Orman was also addressing physical cleanliness (as with house or car) and this made me laugh a bit as this is not my specialty, but as I was digging through boxes yesterday looking for a particular short story to give to my classes (and found within minutes! a triumph) the dust was ovewhelming, and I was reminded again why I do want things to be different. The sneeze factor alone is a deterrant to digging through old stuff, and also not something I want to live with for the long-term. I read some frightening statistic that most dust consists of flaked-off human skin, and it wouldn’t surprise me.  I sense there’s a metaphor to be made about shedding old skins and then keeping them clinging, but I’ve got to prepare for class now. But, all musings as I try to figure out where my priorities are with this project, but also try not to let this warm-up serve as a delay to my start!

Back and starting again

Well, I know it’s already been awhile, but I’ve been off to the AWP (Associated Writing Program) conference, and it rocked! I had a great time being surrounded by poets, fiction, nonfiction writers, writers who love writing, all sorts. A magnificent trip, but its preparation threw me off my schedule with this blog (and my plan). However, I’ve realized being back is the perfect time to restart.

Don’t think I have yet gotten ’round to explaining my basic idea. I’m taking a tip from a site I’ve admired: flylady.net. The site’s founder (Marla) offers a mix of decluttering advice, household and time management, and cheery Erma Bombeck-esque rah-rahs to anyone who will sign up. If you can handle the influx of email to your inbox, I recommend it. Her most basic principle is that you should spend fifteen minutes a day decluttering your home, no more, no less. Doing more, in one big bad streak of effort is the equivalent of losing a lot of weight on a fad diet, she says. With no plan built-in for maintenance, and no gradual retraining of the self, you’ll only revert back to your old habits in no time.

It all makes sense to me. It really does. The problem? I haven’t yet been able to do it consistently. More later on why I’m undertaking this project at this juncture, the scary wake-up call a friend had, which has been much on my mind, and a class I took in New York City about ten years ago in which the instructor incessantly repeated the mantra, “when you lighten up, miracles happen!” There’s a lot to reflect on about why I like to save stuff, what holding onto it can or might mean, the weight, literal and otherwise, I’m carrying, but I don’t want to overly dwell on this now. I want to use the power of the public diary (blog) to try and keep track of my progress, reflect a bit as I go, and test out flylady’s method. When I have been able to stick with her plan in the past, I’ve got to admit, it’s always seemed the most truly painless way to deal with my heaps o’papers and piles o’things.

Came back from the trip to an email from a personal organizer I had worked with for a bit (fantastic) and wanted to pick up with again. But, alas, she’s taking a full-time job, hence scaling back her business. We might still squeeze in a few hours, but the real problem is I just can’t afford the expense right now. (Why and HOW personal organizers can get away with the rates they do should be the subject of another post. She was willing to cut her rates for me, but I don’t envision finding someone new who would do that would be as easily.) If I can, will try to pick up a few hours, but want to try the self-monitoring, à la the financial bloggers, for now.

So, to the subject at hand. Coming back from a vacation it always seems SO startling to see the piles of papers, stacks of books, heaps o’detritus everywhere, that when I’m busy I just ignore. I almost feel like it’s a magic period which will soon disappear just as I sink into the busy fullness of my work life. But came back last night, amazed at the tottering piles (and not so tottering, as the cats had managed to knock over a few) and felt a renewed surge of commitment. Nevermind, teeming with a million and one good ideas from the conference and I don’t want them to be lost, literally or figuratively, in the muck and clutter of my desk and old concepts for books, article, poems, that should be weeded out.

More to meditate on here, but need to push on for the day, and need to get in my fifteen minutes now. But there should be a word for that first opportunity when back from a trip to see your space newly, whether attractive or not. I think it must be a bit like what a guest sees. And while I like my apartment a lot, the piles and disorder — not so appealing. New vows, new ideas, and hopefully, new sparks from the conference, not to be lost in the piles.

Beginnings

No, this blog isn’t going to be about the kind of fifteen minutes you might have thought it would be. I’m not after fame (at least not here) — but rather the idea that I can work towards certain goals or ambitions — a quarter hour at a time.

I was struck over the weekend by an article on the front page of The New York Times about debt bloggers – people who had kept their debt a secret for years, accruing all the more interest all the while, and how blogging had “kept them honest,” or so they said, as they worked towards eradicating their debt. Had a lively discussion with a friend about it all. He found their self-exposure mortifying, stunning, and couldn’t understand why they would do it.

It led me to think about how my own point of view on blogs has changed. At first, I couldn’t believe anyone would open up their private life to public exposure (even if anonymously), but what I realized was there is a certain kind of comfort in knowing others are going through what you are as well. And I admire the debt bloggers for being so open about the uphill path they’re on. I also think the article hit such a nerve, and was considered front-page sensational, because it was about money, the one topic we’re not supposed to discuss in “polite company.” And not only were they discussing it, they were publishing their past mishandlings for the world to see.

It led me to wonder if I could use a blog to track and monitor things that I want to accomplish. Although I prefer to remain anonymous, I like the idea that you, dear reader, are out there, caring somehow, or sharing a similiar struggle. I’m taking as my own challenge the goal of decluttering, organizing, revamping my apartment — fifteen minutes at a time. More later about the plan, but an introduction for now, and an invitation to share in the journey, even if for a few minutes.