Writing: The Last Refuge for Life’s Dumbassery

Are there any fellow writers who happen to be reading my blog today? Anyone floundering for direction, unsure of the difference between spinning wheels and making forward momentum? I think I’ve recently had an epiphany…

My life has been riddled with many conflicting inspirations, one cancelling out the other. I’ve always been scattered, nomadic by nature means moving frequently, changing career ambitions frequently… I’ll throw myself at some startup business just to find my enthusiasm fizzle before I can get anything lucrative off the ground… I once wrote a list of careers I could see myself pursuing, and ended with 47, and those are just the ones that came to mind in a few minutes… all of this scatteredness, though, I’m beginning to see may be something to embrace rather than fix. As a writer, every failed career change, every ridiculous life decision, can be channeled into a life lesson that could help someone else. If you’ve read this far, and have a similar affliction, maybe my words will help you find direction too:)

I am going to spend a few minutes each day checking in with a morning blog, and let it unfurl on its own. I intend to embrace the unknowns of my writing and write anyway for the next couple weeks, to cure this feeling of compelled to write, without knowing what I want to write about. Just to try something new. Because when the ideas flip and change and fold in on themselves in the privacy of my own mind, they aren’t going anywhere… they’re just one long daydream. My thought is that by doing a couple weeks of stream of consciousness, the direction I want this blog to go will become more obvious! Or at the very least I will know I’ve given it a try! If you’ve read this far, thank you for your time!

The Ignored Artist (and for good reason)

Happy Sunday to all my readers!

I’m attempting to restructure my time… Can you relate to moments in your life when you realize your priorities are all totally confused? No idea what you do that has value?

I have been working toward simple living and a simple schedule for most of my life. My idea was to create a practical low maintenance life framework, so that I was free to pursue creative endeavors. A couple months ago, I did seem to finally achieve this.

My previous blog post illustrates the fulcrum that finally pulled me there, after realizing I had inadvertently created a totally unfocused and scattered life. In the last few years, I have established a wonderful routine as a dogwalker, and minimized my possessions to a happy place. Almost everything I held onto has value, and I could move all personal possessions to my Jeep within the hour.

This, however, suddenly has dropped me into a bit of a void, Ready, set, empty life! It made me realize how much time and energy ‘clutter’ was taking up, and although it was annoying to have it tugging at me, it distracted me from the realization that I had become depressed. Especially in the face of overwhelming, terrible global news that can paralyze anyone who feels they can’t help…

My creative endeavors have been sabotaged the last few months by my belief that nothing I do has value. I just now realize where this is coming from…

I have spent countless hours and days creating websites to advertise my handcrafted jewelry just to almost never ever make a sell. I have created dozens of videos on YouTube to only rarely get a comment, just to have the comment weirdly deleted seconds after seeing it. I have created links to other links, and placed a link on FaceBook, in hopes that at least my for-real friends would click on my videos, just to discover that it also gets zero views.

But this isn’t the worst part. The worst part is seeing all the subpar work out there that gets thousands of views. A collection of some half-baked rants by a young YouTuber about nothing gets 10,000 subscribers within the year.

Ok, so maybe is this my rant. A realization that social media can bludgeon a person’s creativity. I’m most certainly not the only artist who feels this way. But I have never been creative for the sake of others anyway! I wrote and made things because I felt compelled to do it, not because of encouragement from others. Writers write, crafters craft just because…

I’m imagining that this artificial internet construct has dampened other writers and artist’s spirits too. Before the internet, one could imagine that if their work was not reaching anyone, it was possibly because no one had opportunity to see it, and getting out to a neighborhood vending event would at least provide opportunity for real connection with others. But now, once it’s out there, and people choose to pass you by, you realize where you rate in the mad scramble for attention.

Perhaps it is time to return to community art events, where neighbors have opportunity to see what each other are creating. A garden party allows you to see firsthand the cherry tomatoes next door, that are just amazing but wouldn’t stand out amongst the 100,000 other cherry tomato plants among the more clever YouTubers on the internet. The sculptress who makes just enough unique 3D designs to share with a select few….

It would be great to get to know more of my neighbors and find out what they have been doing, instead of feeling alone and insignificant. Who knows, maybe we will inspire each other to create something new, which would have never been thought of alone!

Little Boy Lost

Today, I was driving home with a carload of dogs (one of of whom barks aggressively at the slightest provocation…) when I noticed, in a neighborhood adjacent to a busy street, a little boy running, way too young to be out on his own. Maybe two or three years old? He was confusedly running toward the busy intersection. I Instinctively scanned in lookout for the nearest outdoor neighbor, and discovered someone out front, a couple houses away, polishing his car. I asked him if his child was out roaming. He said, ‘No,’ and before I had a chance to say anything more, and only simply pointed (with my dog barking aggressively), he was in hot pursuit toward this lost child.

As I circled back around, he had stopped the child, right at the busy intersection. I tried to communicate with him, but my aggressive dog was barking crazily, as usual, deafening any sounds I attempted to make. I gave this man thumbs up and pointed the direction from which the child had been running. I then drove around the block and happened upon a man looking around anxiously. I asked him if he was missing someone, and he said, ‘Yes!’

I pointed him to the corner where I had originally seen the little boy, then drove around the block again, where I saw the car-polishing man, standing next to the child, calling on the phone. The child was crying, this man trying to console him… I pulled over and let them know that his person was looking for him, just ahead. This man walked the crying child to the corner, toward ehich I presume was his dad, and I watched as the two lovingly reunited, with a scratch on the head.

I keep thinking about this man who so quickly sprung into intuitive action, to help this little boy, and it makes me feel happy to have seen such a thing.

(The attached video was a ballad about a similar thing; ‘Little Boy Lost’ popped into my head as I was reflecting on what just happened, and when I googled it, this video popped up. Eerily, the boy in the video was quite similar to the lost boy I encountered today…)

What they *DON’T* tell you about minimalism

It was 2015 when I first became aware of the concept of minimalism, but i barely had an awareness of the extent one needs to go, to really reap the benefits of simplifying one’s environment.

Let me back up to the tipping point*… in 2015, when I lived in a 300 square foot apartment, lined with closets. I was taking on complicated and stress-filled consulting jobs. I was stressed to a ridiculous point, attempting to be perfectly ethical on all fronts… I was the poster child for anxiety, completely scattered between going to school for permaculture design, teaching bookkeeping at the same school where I was a student of horticulture, and serving as a computer-based accountant, where I rarely charged what my services were worth, yet didn’t stop, even if working for free, until all my clients’ issues were resolved.

Oh, and I had a part-time landscape maintenance business on the side, where I would sometimes take a two-hour bicycle ride to do a one-hour project, then end up spending all the money I’d earned on ‘snacks,’ which I would guiltily eat on the way back on the bus, arriving at home just to hit the couch in exhaustion…

And then there were my lists… I had ‘To Do’ lists that referred to other ‘To Do’ lists. Subsections broken down by areas of my life, based on one-year, five-year and lifelong goals…. I would pour over the lists and translate them into ‘To Do’ activities for days of the week. Just to find I barely had the time to take care to maintain my home, let alone working toward these long-term goals.

All the while, I was sinking further and further into debt, in spite of all my good faith efforts and workaholism. I would constantly redo my bookkeeping as I watched my debt grow. In retrospect, my lack of minimalism was largely displayed in my trips to the grocery store. I was constantly overbuying groceries, and, in defeat, not having time to eat them before they went bad, time and again throwing them in the compost bin.

I had stacks of bins, filled with books I never had time to read, and games I never had time or social connections to play. I had a closetful of fancy vacuums and air filters, designed to improve the air quality of my room, which seemed to have given my recently adopted dog an ongoing case of wheezing (which the vet suspected was asthma brought on by dust). I also had kitchen cupboards filled with gadgets and containers that promised to help me create nourishing eating habits, meals that would practically cook themselves.

To bring this all around to minimalism, or lack thereof, my only outlet was to buy creature comforts, and exotic ethical foods that were, repeatedly, too unpalatable to eat. I continued to lose weight and gain debt. My life was chaos as I raced from teaching to classes to clients, and I filled my closets with items that I thought would bring joy or help me get control over my housekeeping.

Oh, and yes, this is significant; I stumbled upon a documentary about tiny house living, which led to more clutter, as I took on a project to build a tiny house on a friend’s property… so I bought a trailer, and a tiny trailer, and lots of tools, and proceeded to learn how to use tools by attempting to build a teeny tiny ‘teardrop’ trailer. I had a sketchy plan that I would somehow build an 8×20 tiny house, while living in a 4×8 teardrop trailer 200 miles outside of town, where my work was. Needless to say, this added another leave of complexity, and stuff, to an already confusing, stress-filled life. I was ina constant state of, at least, low-level panic.

So the *tipping point,* which I previously mentioned, occurred when I came home one late evening to discover a note on my door, indicating the landlords wished me to vacate in one month. Although I had always paid my rent on time, they had suddenly decided to reoccupy the place. This forced me to face the unmanageability of my life, and a piercing fear of homelessness. I was beyond broke, and had no idea how I would find a place for my animals and all my stuff…

There were so many details that required a ‘home’ base, both physically and mentally. Not just all my possessions, and my dog and cat, but my plans, my grand plans, and my lists. So many lists, the list flow chart…

I felt betrayed by reality. The renters’ illusion. That the king’s ransom you pay each month lends you no security for the future, regardless of how many years you diligently paid your rent. At most, which I managed to negotiate, you get 3 months to figure out how to make a transition and avoid homelessness. and in this town, a walk to the grocery store will remind you of those who fell between the slats.

Trying hard and doing good are like a speck of dust in the face of your real vs deserved destiny. Or at least that was my feeling upon finding the eviction notice on my door that night. In between peculiar chest pains, which I chalked up to anxiety, I spent all night awake, grabbing onto an unrealistic plan to housesit in exotic parts of the country with my cat and dog.

Quite fortuitous, however, was the fact that I had a client who happened to have an unoccupied RPod travel trailer, and loving neighbors with hearts big enough to allow me to park that RPod in their front lawn, mere feet from the street where I could watch my dog watch the people pass by on the sidewalk. The transformer buzzed overhead, next to a street light, and that was my life for the next year, as I refused to let go of anything, and assured myself I only had 12 bins of personal items stacked along the back of their house, and everything else I deemed ‘essential,’ shoved in bins or storage cabinets, collecting mold out of site… Did these possessions ground me? I had minimized my square feet, but I had not minimized my possessions. This left me feeling that I was living in a hoarder’s closet. My footprint was smaller, but jam packed full of clutter.

I was scattered in mind, food, environment, plans…

Fast forward a year later when I got a call from my friend who owned the RPod, who suddenly needed it back (because of an issue no fault of her own), and so my eviction became eminent. This put me in overdrive, and during the next couple months, I began to build a very tiny shed, where I had to downgrade even further. Fortunately, water damage destroyed one of my 18gallon bins, but the sentimental stuff remained undisturbed…

During the next three years, I proceeded to build a tiny 10 x 12 workshop for my dogs and me, while staying with my friends so gracious to let me live with them, and I dragged all my possessions from the RPod to the backyard, where I would spend much of my time.

I could go through the details of my gradual downgrade, but really it was a repeat of the same scenario… I would evaluate whether or not I needed or wanted possession after possession. My first go-thru involved getting rid of things I thought I would need if there were a zombie apocalypse. I conveniently decided that should such a thing occur, a full tank of gas, reliable transportation and willingness to hunt squirrels is really your only hope to survive. Also, a box of tools to rebuild once you’ve made your escape. I took so many trips to Goodwill! I became familiar with the emotional pain of letting it go. But then I would say a mantra that its new home would get more use. And as I drove away, I would feel my spirit lighten, as I felt a bit more light footed.

My next wave of declutter was way more challenging. The sentimental stuff! After two years of gradually letting go of material items, my space looked quite minimal. There was nothing left but four heavy boxes of journals and letters. Boxes that had not been opened in 20 years, except for when I was jamming more items into them… But I finally became aware that the emotional weight of those boxes was dragging me down, and it was time to tackle them. I actually wrote a blog on that process alone, titled ‘Goodbye Journals!’ It took a couple weeks and was quite gut wrenching. I grieved much as I let go of mementos of relationships that had ended years, sometimes decades ago. I shredded many journals where I was spinning my wheels for months on some same struggle. I did also scan many letters and meaningful journal entries, but in the spirit of paring down, letting go. I have to admit a wrench was thrown into the works when I thought I lost the flash drive everything had gotten scanned onto, but thankfully I did eventually find it. It is dubious, though, whether this flashdrive is something I actually ever will benefit from returning to, though.

This final step of letting go of those weighty sentimental boxes… this is, I believe where I am preparing myself for new spiritual growth.

I did not realize that the belief that those boxes held meaning was taking up much more space than the boxes themselves. As crazy as it seems to realize, I was subconsciously believing I would pick up where I left off with all these broken and ended relationships. Or that I would take the path I wrote about in my journal a decade ago, a path that has long since been covered in weeds, and is no longer a path at all. Yes, there were meaningful struggles I’d written about, and caring letters I’d received, but those moments have long since passed. Reading of these moments would not revive them, and by delving into them, I was faking into a sort of fiction; moments that had died long ago…

But how very sad a time to let them all go! It has taken me years of knowing I should but not wanting to. These ghosts have been such good friends to me during alone times! Even though I dared not get into these boxes, just having them kept the illusion alive.

One particular scoundrel of a boyfriend, who I will always dearly love, and with whom I had much adventure, had a particularly strange hold on me. I was not even conscious of a suspended memory that I incidentally have passed by several times a week for the past few years. It is on the way to a dog park just outside of town. A Motel 6, and the room where we stayed just above a pool. All tucked out of view from the road, where I’ve given it only peripheral thought through the years…

But a couple weeks ago, I decided that when I passed by, I’d drive around to where we had stayed, where I remembered lounging by the pool. Memories came awash as I got slower to the motel. I remembered how he’d been the first person to encourage my creativity, and how he knew me better than anyone. I couldn’t remember for sure why we’d broken up, having earlier found a batch of cards he’d given me during our time together, with touching sketches and sentiments. And reminders of how he wasn’t giving up hope in our potential.

Once I got to the motel and rounded the corner, I saw that pool. It was much smaller than I remembered! There were teenagers huddled together in one corner, sharing a cigarette, and even though it was the middle of the summer, the pool was covered by a huge canvas, leaves collecting in the middle. I then remembered how hungover I was that day, and how I had wanted him to join me, yet I was too angry and restless to sit still and enjoy the sunny day, let alone get in the pool. What was I angry about? Who knows?! It was a very long time ago.

Day Two of Dialing in

Hi everyone! I’m continuing with my writing again in hopes a theme will spring forth… I think that what I wrote yesterday was in a way the result of some massive minimalism I completed, to the zone of diminishing returns anyway. It has freed up much space in my life, but also has left a painful void… saying goodbye to tons of sentimental stuff was probably the worst of it… journals and letters I hadn’t been interested in returning to in at least a decade, craft supplies I had no interest in using, etc… now all my personal items could be carried in two pannier bike bags, a book bag, and a shoebox. I do have a smallish box of books too, but those could be left behind if necessary, for others to use… there is now a profound emptiness in my life. I am trying to use evening ‘beer time’ to make minor improvements, to fill in some self-care stuff that I still have not figured out. Such as what to eat for breakfast. I should have food on hand instead of winging it everyday! I see so many videos that go viral, people talking about their life, and I wonder if all their followers make them feel less lonely, or if they make commission and are able to use that money to travel…I miss the rain so much!

Dialing In!

Hello everyone! I am attempting to add writing structure to my life. Not sure if I will publish this entry, but will start by building a writing routine again. Ten minutes a day for a week; we’ll see how it goes!

This will be stream-of-consciousness to get me back in the habit! I have been highly motivated with my creative endeavors online… this past year, my intuitive reflections have confirmed what I’ve always known; my best contributions are through my artistic endeavors. An epiphany I had recently, however, is that this doesn’t mean my artistic endeavors are the best.

I spent almost an entire decade struggling to make myself happy as a bookkeeper. Although I totally failed at establishing routine habits, I was really good at the work itself… diligent and determined until I untangled any issues. But I was sooo unhappy. It was a trade in which conforming to the systems was everything. Another thing, demand of my service exceeded supply. I always had more work than I had time to do. But, because I disliked the work so, and it created such excessive anxiety and depression in my life, I eventually closed shop.

Artistic endeavors are the opposite in terms of systems, and in terms of supply vs demand. Unique expression, creating something outside the system, is the goal. But it is not a need-based product or service, and it is exceedingly competitive, where the number of unique artists available, esp with the advent of the internet, becomes a blur of unique uploaded videos of music or art, that mostly gets lost in a sea of competition.

These thoughts are what occur to me, when I attempt to sit down and work on this blog, or my YouTube channel, or my Etsy website. Despondency has frozen me out.

I should mention too that I do part-time dogwalking, which was a shift that seemed to occur happenstance. I don’t know why I don’t think of this as a third option of life’s calling, but maybe I should. This gives me routine, and my dogs always love to see me. But I guess when I think of contributing to a legacy that will outlive me, writing and creating music keep calling me back as an imperative. So here I am, back at it!

Ok, I think I will close here, save this as a draft, and maybe eventually publish. What I wish to communicate is still not clear!

Goodbye Journals!

#minimalism

#letting go of journals

(Aka The Summer I Realized it’s Kinder to the World *Not* to write a Memoir)

Hello world! How are you?? I just completed a huge shredding project, which resulted in letting go of 35 years of journals. I have just created enough rat nesting materials for a small village to set up an intricate camp.

Considering the slipshod and careless way I’ve stumbled through the years, having a nomadic soul, which resulted in dozens of moves, it seems no small miracle I had even been able to hold onto these journals at all.

I’ve been a minimalist forever, at least in theory, but those notebooks were always carefully preserved. Somehow they had survived many natural disasters… when I lived in a bread truck, which was the peak of chaos, when I encountering an ant invasion, then a roach invasion, a flood, a robbery, a tow (which teetered on being cost prohibitive to retrieve)…

Even a few years ago, when I was living in a partially constructed shed with only tarp separating me from many rainy nights, these boxes remained undisturbed, as if protected by some divine angel. Other of my boxes did get damaged, destroyed from rain finding its way inside, but not those journals… Maybe the fact that they remained completely intact, frozen in time from the first moment I put pen to paper, led me to believe they *must* have value. Although in 30 years, something always stopped me from getting into those boxes, I always thought they’d be there for me, to reveal an amazing life story of struggles and triumphs, once I became settled down enough to get to them.

I must have had some other intuition about them too. I vaguely remembered directionless scribbles, motivated by some strong yet ‘trivial in the scheme of things’ emotions long forgotten. A nagging irritation, too, that for every beautiful notebook i would pick out, upon completion of filling another, the value of its preciousness would seem to quickly depreciate once words started spilling onto it. In fact, the last ten years or so, the spiral bounds I chose were nondescript college-ruled, as if I could more easily live up to the expectations of a more common notebook.

Well, finally, a couple weeks ago, I broke into this project, having pared down every other material area of my life. Additionally I was motivated by watching my friend struggle with the towers of sentimental stuff he inherited when his mother died… I hated to think of leaving someone else with a similar burden…

So, a couple weeks ago, I tentatively popped off the lid of one of the two bulky boxes, and lifted out my oldest journal, dated 1984. It was a journal required by my high school class during a trip to Yosemite. A wondrous adventure, and my first time outside of Arkansas. The emotions I felt, riding on an airplane for the first time, were magical. The realization of a bigger world than I’d imagined, well… was beyond words. But the assignment was to journal, so journal I did.

My entries were guarded, polite, revealing how pretty I thought the scenery. Page after page, sometimes listing the botanical name of a flower prevalent to an area, sometimes naming a mountain range. As I was reading this notebook, I fell asleep. I figured maybe future writing would become more captivating. Wrong!

I scanned these pages, thinking at least I can maybe refer back, to see how far I’ve come. And there were some forays into literary exercises, a couple cringeworthy poems, one about roses holding their heads in shame during a rainy day, another about the trustworthiness of door hinges. I want to delete the scans so badly! But something stopped me. Nonetheless to at least shred all those pages, what a delight! As if being released from a scaly exoskeleton I’ve long ago outgrown… over the last several days, I spent hours slogging through all my old writing.

The content through the years did change…although the first couple journals were written as an assignment, the following were written only for myself. Of course writing for oneself is different than writing for an instructor, and so then, the quality of my writing indeed took an even more profound nose dive. The scribbles became dips into unparalleled self pity, deep sadnesses, and regrettably, painful cliches, and weak metaphors… the worst of it was in my early twenties, when my mental health was at its worse.

So the notebooks continued to be my only outlet. Luckily after the first 15 years of my journaling, I did find some great therapy and support groups, and so my writing cheered up significantly. But it was honestly no more interesting. I just was not able to say anything captivating back then!

Upon reflection, I do know where this earliest depression had come from. I was floundering because i had just graduated from high school as valedictorian, only a couple years earlier, only to discover this profound achievement, which I thought would throw open doors of exciting opportunity for me, landed me in no better of a space, only setting me up for a similar dreary academic path, where I would sit and listen to some professor ramble on incessantly about some specialty topic that had nothing to do with my life or current struggles. Honestly, i did not even like to read or study anything, aside from early artists and filmmakers. Even cooking for myself or getting enough sleep, or eating a nutritious meal was a profound challenge. Even worse, because I was years from being able to accomplish anything big again, I realized all the scholarships I had earned did nothing to fill the horrific spiritual void of which I had become fully aware.

Happily all this made the recent task of shredding all these cringeworthy passages so much easier. Over the last couple weeks, I’ve learned to shred with finesse, page after page vanishing, a moment in time long ago finally being put to rest. And I truly am grateful to open up space in my small studio, either for some new project, or just a breezeway, a task now removed from my nagging checklist.

Letting go of these bins that could have just as easily been ignored for now… but when my mortal soul takes leave of this world, I will not leave anyone else with the odious task of slogging through 30 years of groundhog’s days.

But here’s the thing. I did not realize it would trigger such grieving. The idea i’ve held onto for more than a decade, that I would take these notebooks and create an amazing memoir. I had a wrong idea that the passages would reflect my first nights at all the new cities I moved to, the colorful experiences when I first arrived in DC, or the French quarter, having decided to denounce materialism and live in my van that summer, or when I returned to Seattle and joined my Capitol Hill friends in opposition to the curfew put upon us during the WTO protests. Or what about the time when I adopted a little dog named Chance, who was shivering under a shrub one rainy night when I took him to his forever home, which I would later realize was his 14th birthday. These stories did not make it to my journals, for some reason, making it all the easier to feed the rubbish pages into the shredder. Upon threading, I didn’t even remember some of the people I was upset about, pining away that someone either didn’t call me or didn’t understand me. As I scanned the pages, it became a blur of repetitive circles. Loneliness, irritation, guy crazy stuff, broken diets… mundane stuff! I eventually lost al desire to scan them onto the hard drive and wanted to say a forever goodbye to moments that weren’t very interesting to begin with, and were long ago gone. Good riddance I say! My shredder would even go on regular protests, forced to take breaks to cool down…not even my shredder wanted to deal with these pages! Why did I waste so much time writing all that gibberish! Perhaps it was the knowledge that what I was spinning about wasn’t something resolvable, but misery or mundanity looking for a quiet home… this was not the wheat, but the chaff. Perhaps my dyslexic value system is to blame for this misunderstanding…

I suppose it hurts to let go of a delusion. Having imagined I’d been lugging around the rough draft of the Next Great American Novel is not an easy fantasy to let go. That plastic stack of tubs was my oversized lug of a talisman, my ‘at least I have my journals to remember and create an amazing book.’ Nostalgia I suppose, but is it nostalgia when it is reminding me of days that never were?

For this reason, I am grateful to have shredded all these notebooks!

I have to say, I did keep one notebook. But this is a fictional story, and I am convinced it will make a fine screenplay, once I find the right producer. It is a pithy tale of an angsty girl, who lived through tumultuous times, and is obsessed with writing about every little thing that happens to her, and somehow every victory over these petty little moments are woven together into something special.

Boxes Rock!

I may have found a way to vastly reduce or almost eliminate the visual noise in my small studio, I think I have been maintaining a mentally exhausting workspace for the last four years, due to a couple misunderstandings about how the brain works, I have been stuck in limbo. A tiny patch of clutter, to a sensitive brain, can paralyze creativity and trigger depression. But I finally had a breakthrough, which gave me solution idea for other people like me, The title gives you a hint! More soon, sooner upon demand 😉 Will look forward to sharing with fellow humans on this issue, so feel free to contact me at my aptly called ‘Contact Me’ page if you have ideas or want to hear about simplifying possessions, which does not necessarily mean letting them go:)