DOWNSIZING A LIFE

[This post was published several years ago . . . and I promised to report back on my progress with downsizing. This is the report back. The progress is negligible. Or, in simpler terms, nearly non-existent. My justification for rerunning a report on a project that failed isn't because I'm masochistic--it's because I hope my very public failure might just goad me into something that resembles success. I'll report back on that also.]

Before we get off on the wrong foot, we better come to terms with...well, terms.

Downsizing, yes--making smaller.

A Life--not the day-to-day living, shrinking my existence to something unrecognizable. No, just some of the stuff that has accumulated over the life I've lived.
For example, take my garage--please!


I ought to be ashamed to show pictures of it, but I'm not, actually. Those boxes and bags and file cabinets represent a large portion of my life in physical objects you can hold in your hand. Books (fiction and nonfiction, texts), college notebooks, papers from various organizations I've been involved with. Fabrics from early years of sewing kids' clothing, later pieces bought for quilts (still in the planning stage). Art and needlework books in the filing cabinet. Little Amazon.com boxes with tax returns from past years.

Do I need all that? No, I don't. Some of the tax returns are old enough now to be shredded into obscurity. The art and needlework books have served their purpose and will be donated to the library, either for their shelves or the monthly sale. If the fabrics are still good, I'll donate them to the local senior center where various crafters check out the items for sale. Books--if they're still viable, they'll go to the library, possibly to the local charities for sale by them.

Papers, now--there's a problem. When I see them, I remember the time I spent in an extension homemakers' club and the women who came to the meetings. Or the time I taught a spiritual journaling class for my church during Lent. Another time I taught a one-time seminar on journaling for writers, and how they could use the entries in the journal in their projects. Do I need them now, to remind myself of who I was? I don't think so. Who I was is now and forever part of who I am.

Letters and cards are in a whole separate category. Not sure I can bring myself to destroy them. Cards, eventually. Most don't have notes in them. But letters--now that we're letting the art of letter writing slip into history, letters are precious to me. They represent the time someone spent to let me know how things were with her or him. They bring me back to a time we shared ideas in depth, long letters full of not only what we were doing but what we thought about it; and we shared our feelings, as much as we could reveal, about how our lives were going, our children, our ups and downs.

I won't go into detail about the five closets and linen shelves and drawers in the house. A brief overview--recent purges of clothing that no longer fits made room. But not enough. Closets will have to wait while the garage takes its turn.

Over the past, oh, decade or so, I've been reading about how to organize, how to sort and make room, how to deal with stuff. So I know the theory. Make 3 boxes, and mark them: KEEP, DISCARD, DONATE. Then follow the instructions you marked on the boxes. DON'T, whatever you do, remove anything out of the DISCARD or DONATE boxes and KEEP it! I'm going to try it. Hope it works for me.

Now to put it into practice. I'll report back...sometime. Don't hold any breaths waiting.





Corralling fabrics





A look at perspective

[Yes, a rerun, though I changed the title. I read it through and discovered I'm re-visiting one of my perennial problems...not enough time to do what I want to do. This post looks at that "not enough time" issue--it's all about perspective. And while we're at it, will somebody please look into the irritating recurrence of these same problems/issues/irritations? Thank you.]

There’s a line in The Golden Spiders, by Rex Stout, that I really like:

Archie Goodwin is badgering Nero Wolfe to do some work:

“You’ve always said it’s not enough to earn your money—you have to feel like you’ve earned your money. So let’s earn our money.”

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[Note: This post is not about making money. Sorry. You really don't want to get advice from me on making money. Trust me on this.]

A couple of months ago I had a day when I did several things, and accomplished a lot, for me. By the end of that day I had the satisfaction of time well spent. I felt—emotionally—as if I’d accomplished a lot. Some of that satisfaction came from knowing I’d finished something: a task, one large part of a task, or even a small step.

I won’t tell you what all I did—I do hate to see your eyes glaze over. But I say proudly, I wiped out, completely, my Today List. And it wasn't a short list either.

Sometime back a blog post by the late Writer/Teacher Louise De Salvo entitled “Little by Little” explored what it means to make progress on a project when you have a debilitating disease or condition. Louise De Salvo never knew ahead of time how much energy she would have the next day—maybe none. Maybe only a short time to do a little writing. If it’s 10 minutes, then she used those 10 minutes. If it’s an hour, then she wrote for an hour. And the work got done, “little by little.”

I found her blog post inspiring. Too often I sigh and ignore the little bits of time that could be used to move a project forward.

Do I really have to wait for two hours of free time? Isn’t there something I can do in whatever time slot I have available?

The late Nancy Zieman, host of a long-running quilting/sewing TV show, Sewing with Nancy, believed that's possible. She published a book called 10-20-30 Minutes to Quilt. There’s another inspiration. For each quilt she lists the steps: what can be done in 10 minutes (choose fabrics, perhaps), 20 minutes (cut fabrics), and in 30 minutes (assemble quilt blocks).

My job: Look at my Today List and estimate how many minutes each task will take.

Besides tasks, I like to build in time to rest between, say, starting laundry and vacuuming the hall and bedrooms. This isn’t lying down for a nap kind of rest; this is doing something sitting down—writing checks, knitting a few rows of an afghan, looking through a music book for pieces I can learn. Then back on my feet for the next activity.

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The true issue at hand, I believe, is perspective. Remember the old glass half-full vs. the glass half-empty? Time perceived as "too little to do much with" is still the same amount of time perceived as "just enough time to do one step of that task."

One of the most positive people I know is my family doctor. We discussed time one day--I think the subject was time to read--and she said two minutes might be all the time she had but she'd use those two minutes to skim an article.

Perspective--what you see from where you stand--has a lot to do with perception.

If you're standing in your own way, you won't see anything but your own reflection. If you get out of your own way, you might see something new--or something old in a new way--or something old that can be morphed into something new.

Perspective influences perception, which leads to possibilities.

There you go--three words that begin with P. Juggle them and see what you come up with.

And have a Perceptive week, developed by looking from where you stand, into a future of possibilities.

MID-TERM

We're sneaking up on the middle of the year. Here it is the 13th day of the 6th month.

In another week we'll welcome Summer. And a couple weeks after that, there'll be July 4th fireworks. (Those start in late June in my town, for some unknown reason.)

What can I say about the first half of this year, 2019? 
   --We had a lot of cold weather.
   --We had a lot of rain, after the cold weather.
   --We had hot days in January and February.
   --We had chilly days in May and early June.

Is that all I think about, the weather? 

Okay, here's something else. Students went back to school in January, had a number of snow days (that's old style) which have become e-learning days. Spring breaks happened. School buses parked for a couple of weeks. Then it was zippadee-doo-dah and school's out. Buses parked till August.


Apparently some folks got to plant gardens. Last night I was gifted a box of just-picked ripe Ohio strawberries, along with a couple slabs of gluten-free shortcake to keep the berries company. Makes me think of the gardeners' bounty to come: tomatoes, beans, squash, lettuce, and later on peppers of all colors.


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My life has been mainly dedicated to sewing for the NICU and finding music to play on Sundays at my church. 

Recently I got back into the reading habit. Finished two Maisie Dobbs mysteries (Jacqueline Winspear's creations) that I hadn't read before, and am working on The Once and Future King, by T. H. White (700+ pages; you might recognize parts of the story in the stage play Camelot).

My lawn continues to grow abundantly, as do the lawns all around me in my neighborhood. The peonies bloomed--some are ready for dead-heading--and nearly everyone has a bed of annuals or a hanging basket.

Birds are everywhere. The robin who built a nest on top of my outdoor light fixture (attached to the house) sits every day up there. Every time I hit the garage door opener button she takes off. Those babies will be neurotic.

And evenings we see walkers, runners, joggers, bike riders, dog walkers, and kids going wild.

Yes, we're gearing up for summer. We're a week early, but that's better than late.

Heirloom Tomatoes

JUNE 6

1968 - Robert F. Kennedy, age 42, dies of wounds sustained the previous day when he was shot in Los Angeles; he has just finished a speech celebrating his victory in the California presidential primary.




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1944 - D-Day ("Operation Overlord") - Allies storm the Normandy coast; all five beaches are secured by the Allies. Soldiers from the US, UK, and Canada lose their lives.

". . . . . . by day’s end, 155,000 Allied troops–Americans, British and Canadians–had successfully stormed Normandy’s beaches and were then able to push inland. Within three months, the northern part of France would be freed . . . ." https://history.com/this-day-in-history/d-day

Note:  The National D-Day Memorial Foundation lists 4,414 names of Allied personnel who died on D-Day. This number was arrived at after intense study of various official sources and is considered a more accurate count than the estimates usually cited.

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I've read a lot about World War II; I've seen some movies set during that time. And though a large number of people liked the movie Saving Private Ryan, I couldn't get past the first three or four minutes. Never mind Stephen Spielberg directing, never mind Tom Hanks acting. Some part of me seemed to be in that time and in that place. I couldn't take it.

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I'm also not very political. I don't keep up with what's going on and argue with anybody who is on the "other side" from me. In fact, I find it satisfying that there is more than one side, more than one way to look at life, at our country, at the ways we govern. 

Today's post doesn't come with a happy ending. There is no ending. Wars come and go, and come again. Our country tries, as best it can, to help make things better. That may not happen, but then again, if no one tries, it surely will not happen.

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"Lest we forget" is appropriate at any time, not just Veterans' Day or Remembrance Day. If remembering the sadness, the pain, the horror is too much, then we can remember the good that was intended, the kindness of those who gave their lives. And give thanks for the love they showed, for us and others.