Recently I have seen Facebook posts by a number of different friends,
along the general lines of "2016, You Suck!" Friends and family who
have posted this sentiment are generally lamenting the loss of beloved
celebrities - actors, musicians, authors, etc. - if not the far suckier
things like economic uncertainties and violence around the world. I know
that most, if not all, of those sentiments are written in the moment,
and a careful examination of 2015 or 2014 or 2013 would reveal the same
number of losses, the same number of incidents in our individual
communities and around the world which invoke fear and uncertainty and
disgust. Social media has a tendency to make us think things have never
been this bad in all the history of mankind (they have) and we've never
lost so many actors and musicians and authors as we have this year (we
have - go to Wikipedia, type in the year, scroll down.)
Life is hard. Sometimes it's harder than it is at other times.
Life is wonderful. Sometimes it's more wonderful than at other times.
Sometimes
it's both. For myself, 2016 has been both. I pushed myself outside my
comfort zone a dozen times and found myself pushed outside it by
unwelcome forces. Forgotten fears resurfaced. New fears tagged along.
There have been health concerns, both for myself and in my family, and a
couple of those were downright frightening. There was stress at work. I
changed residences and even after downsizing I still have
way.too.much.stuff. And if anyone is actually looking for sucky stuff,
one only has to turn on the news (it is debatable who portrays doom and
gloom the best: social media or the "real" media.)
Pushed
outside my comfort zone, I found forgotten strength to handle those
forgotten fears. Rifts were healed, friendships renewed. Health scares
turned out to be less frightening than when they first appeared, and
health returned. Babies were born - beautiful, precious babies - a
grandnephew and children of friends, and I got to hold them, and did I mention they are
beautiful and precious? (Seriously, people, if you think this or any other year
"sucks", you need to go ask to hold someone's baby, and hold that baby
until your perspective is reset!) I taught 3-4-5 year old children at
church this year and I'm pretty sure I have less hair than when I
started but oh, how I have grown to love those children! Work got better
- considerably so - not less challenging, but less stressful. "Stuff"
is making its way out the door faster than it's coming in. I read more, and found books which made it to my "favorites" shelf. I wrote more (not on my blogs; I know you just checked that, admit it!) - and - I submitted my work. Okay, so it was rejected. But I submitted! For the first time in a decade.
I woke up. 364 days so far this
year, I woke up. I have wonderfully supportive friends and family who
are there at times of crises and there for the good times. I have a job.
I have food on the table and in the pantry. I have what a coworker
refers to as "The Over 50 Disease" but overall, my health is good. I
live in a free country where I get a say in who runs it, even if
ofttimes those choices are less than stellar. The tough parts of this
year I handled, occasionally with finesse and decorum, and those tough
times put me on paths I wouldn't have found myself on otherwise.
One
of those paths took me where I needed to be for my heart to be open to a
relationship with an absolutely amazing woman. The relationship is yet in its infancy and I am still astounded at the exquisite comfort
and joy of having this incredibly loving and lovable person in my life, who loves and cherishes me and allows me to love and cherish her in return. And before I break out into song, I'll
just say I am a truly blessed man.
No, 2016, you don't suck. You totally rock.
Thursday, December 29, 2016
Sunday, May 22, 2016
Transplanting
It seems odd to sit down and blog after a too-long absence, letting too many things get in the way of writing. I profess that writing is a love but I don't do it often enough to convince anyone, including myself, that it actually is.
It seems odder still to break that drought selecting my "Where I'm Planted" blog - when I am being uprooted. The apartment building I've called home for 25 years was sold in December, and the new owners decided to make some much needed and long neglected repairs and upgrades. Such things are expensive, and in the current housing economy where people are paying outrageous rents for even studio apartments, my option for signing a lease on one of the apartments already upgraded would mean paying more than I wanted to pay. I could have afforded it but I had gotten used to putting a certain amount into m,y saving every month, and I would not have had that.
Deeper than financial constraints was the recognition and acceptance of the fact that I had been wanting a change for a few years, anyway. But I hadn't made the change, because it required more effort than I either would or could expend. Over the years, my clutter had not earned me a spot on one of those TV shows, but it had indeed affected me spiritually and emotionally and (and once I started stirring up dust in neglected and forgotten closets) physically. In keeping with the garden/planted analogy, my soil had dried up and become choked with weeds and rocks and my creativity, even my desire to be creative, had become dull and lifeless and whatever did grow in my garden had a short life span.
My first impression of this connection between clutter and creativity came a couple years ago when I visited my parents for a week and one morning I awoke wanting and needing to write. and I wrote my first short story in about a decade. I do not discount my blogging during that dry spell, but I hadn't written any fiction in a very long time. A year later I wrote another short story, this time at the home of a friend who I was house and pet-sitting for. Shortly after that I wrote a Doctor Who fanfic for a friend, again, mostly away from home. Why did I feel more creative away from home than at home? I decided there might be something to that New-Agey stuff I'd heard about negative energy in clutter. Even if my new writing environments had clutter of their own, it wasn't my clutter, so it didn't bother me on either a conscious or unconscious level. So even before knowing I'd have to move I tried decluttering - but not being a requirement, I never got that far. Far enough to notice a positive difference, but not far enough to build up any kind of momentum. Until I was required to do it, I hadn't realized how adept I had grown at not only blithely ignoring the clutter, but also how incredibly (dare I say creatively?) adept I'd grown at hiding my clutter even from myself. It's not just the accumulated mass of 25 years in the same place I've been dealing with for two months, but the years before when the moves were quick and not as carefully gleaned.
Many of my discoveries have been pleasant; letters and mementos from ages past brought good memories and a desire to reconnect with friends and family. Anyone remember the pre-digital age when people wrote letters longhand and you waited weeks or months to hear back, longer if your friend lived overseas? And how it felt to see that in your mail box? And how that compares to the quasi-thrill of seeing something forwarded 47 times in your email inbox, something with no real personality or news of its own attached? Social media has put me in touch with people I'd otherwise lost contact with - but as a way of building and strengthening connections, it falls short. The fruit of those plants is small and stunted or even non-existent. Once settled, I intend to use all those blank greeting cards and postage stamps I've run across to good use.
Many of the discoveries have been less-than-pleasant; reminders of how I used to clean up: everything (magazines, junk mail, bills both paid and unpaid, aforementioned correspondence from friends and family, toys, etc) into a box and the box into a room to be sorted "later". There's where not only my creativity kicked in, but my scientific genius; I manipulated time and space and hid things from view, compacting roomsful of clutter into spaces not much larger than Mary Poppins's carpetbag.
Then comes the gleaning, the weeding of my garden, if you will. My goal, once I knew where I was moving and knowing how much time I had to do it, was to cut everything in half, even though I was moving to approximately the same square footage. I didn't want to still feel overwhelmed and hemmed in, so I planned to half everything. Many things were easy to do this with and in fact much was cut into a fourth or fifth or even sixth. Books I set a separate goal of cutting out a third, hoping with that goal I might take a fourth out the door. But life if full of surprises. So adept had I gotten at creating my own little TARDIS, I didn't realize how much the half I kept would still be.
Organizational experts will tell you things like "If you hadn't read it, listened to it, worn it, otherwise used it in a year, carry it out the door." Not bad advice, but advice which needs to be taken with a bit of wisdom. Last year I read two books which had been on my shelves unread for twenty years (for the curious, "Matilda" and "The Phantom Toolbooth") - books which I immediately added to my "favorites" list, and therefore to my "to be shared" and "to be read again and again" lists. Had I simply gleaned them from my library unread, I would've been poorer for it - even if I wouldn't have known. But with the magic only books contain, I knew now was the time to read them, and as I've tried to cut my books by a third, those survived. Following the wisdom, though, I donated to friends, family and thrift stores books which no longer piqued my curiosity even if they had when initially bought, and books which I enjoyed ten-twenty years ago but which I'm reasonably certain I won't re-read, along with their sequels, many of which I never quite got to. In the same vein, going through my closet allowed me to get rid of clothes in perfectly good condition but which I no longer care for the color or style of, and clothes I'd outgrown - and ironically, the clothes I hadn't worn for over a year because they were too big, fit perfectly well now and that revamped my wardrobe without straining my wallet!
All that to say, there's something to the if-you-haven't-used-it philosophy. The rules of six months or a year or three years aren't the point, and don't fit every situation, but I think I'd gotten too caught up at finding a rule that fir every situation I ended up doing nothing for far too long. Deciding my rule would be "If it's truly important now, keep it; if not, lose it" gives me permission to say goodbye to some things, hold on to others awhile longer without guilt. And that "awhile longer" in some cases ended up being a mere week. As often as I have experienced "Buyer's Remorse", I didn't want to substitute it with "Donator's Remorse" which is less common but which I had experienced often enough that the fear of it had caused me to hold on too long to certain things. The gardening analogy here might be, "Well, there are a lot of rocks and weeds here and the soil is dried and lifeless, but the seed is still there and it might come up if I wait long enough..."
Through having a garden in plastic pots on my porch and kitchen windowsill the past couple years ago has taught me a few life lessons. Noticing how plants grow, wither, recover and flourish again has taught me that while transplanting a plant traumatizes it, the amount of care given it during the transplanting process and directly after in its new place in the sun, say a great deal on how that plant is going to bounce back and flourish, even beyond its former splendor. I have been blessed these last two months with family and friends encouraging me, and helping me to maintain my vision, and committing to be there come moving day (which is looming frightfully near!) I have been blessed with seeing, in many small ways, my creativity returning, even amidst the chaos and disarray of keep-don't-keep-and-empty-boxes-for-each. And I've been blessed with seeing my enthusiasm slowly returning; what little bit I'd even noticed it had gone away was marred by the fact I wasn't enthusiastic enough to care about it returning.
One of my favorite quotes is by Neal A Maxwell:
“The harrowing of the soul can be like the harrowing of the soil to increase the yield, things are turned upside down.”
I'm being uprooted. The choice wasn't mine, save for the fact I'd prayed for new opportunities to grow and opportunities t get out of the rut I'd felt myself in. The choice of when wasn't mine; the choice of where is, and the choice of whether or not I will thrive - or in the words given to my friend in answer to prayer, the words which prompted this blog for me - bloom where I am planted - that's my choice, too.
It seems odder still to break that drought selecting my "Where I'm Planted" blog - when I am being uprooted. The apartment building I've called home for 25 years was sold in December, and the new owners decided to make some much needed and long neglected repairs and upgrades. Such things are expensive, and in the current housing economy where people are paying outrageous rents for even studio apartments, my option for signing a lease on one of the apartments already upgraded would mean paying more than I wanted to pay. I could have afforded it but I had gotten used to putting a certain amount into m,y saving every month, and I would not have had that.
Deeper than financial constraints was the recognition and acceptance of the fact that I had been wanting a change for a few years, anyway. But I hadn't made the change, because it required more effort than I either would or could expend. Over the years, my clutter had not earned me a spot on one of those TV shows, but it had indeed affected me spiritually and emotionally and (and once I started stirring up dust in neglected and forgotten closets) physically. In keeping with the garden/planted analogy, my soil had dried up and become choked with weeds and rocks and my creativity, even my desire to be creative, had become dull and lifeless and whatever did grow in my garden had a short life span.
My first impression of this connection between clutter and creativity came a couple years ago when I visited my parents for a week and one morning I awoke wanting and needing to write. and I wrote my first short story in about a decade. I do not discount my blogging during that dry spell, but I hadn't written any fiction in a very long time. A year later I wrote another short story, this time at the home of a friend who I was house and pet-sitting for. Shortly after that I wrote a Doctor Who fanfic for a friend, again, mostly away from home. Why did I feel more creative away from home than at home? I decided there might be something to that New-Agey stuff I'd heard about negative energy in clutter. Even if my new writing environments had clutter of their own, it wasn't my clutter, so it didn't bother me on either a conscious or unconscious level. So even before knowing I'd have to move I tried decluttering - but not being a requirement, I never got that far. Far enough to notice a positive difference, but not far enough to build up any kind of momentum. Until I was required to do it, I hadn't realized how adept I had grown at not only blithely ignoring the clutter, but also how incredibly (dare I say creatively?) adept I'd grown at hiding my clutter even from myself. It's not just the accumulated mass of 25 years in the same place I've been dealing with for two months, but the years before when the moves were quick and not as carefully gleaned.
Many of my discoveries have been pleasant; letters and mementos from ages past brought good memories and a desire to reconnect with friends and family. Anyone remember the pre-digital age when people wrote letters longhand and you waited weeks or months to hear back, longer if your friend lived overseas? And how it felt to see that in your mail box? And how that compares to the quasi-thrill of seeing something forwarded 47 times in your email inbox, something with no real personality or news of its own attached? Social media has put me in touch with people I'd otherwise lost contact with - but as a way of building and strengthening connections, it falls short. The fruit of those plants is small and stunted or even non-existent. Once settled, I intend to use all those blank greeting cards and postage stamps I've run across to good use.
Many of the discoveries have been less-than-pleasant; reminders of how I used to clean up: everything (magazines, junk mail, bills both paid and unpaid, aforementioned correspondence from friends and family, toys, etc) into a box and the box into a room to be sorted "later". There's where not only my creativity kicked in, but my scientific genius; I manipulated time and space and hid things from view, compacting roomsful of clutter into spaces not much larger than Mary Poppins's carpetbag.
Then comes the gleaning, the weeding of my garden, if you will. My goal, once I knew where I was moving and knowing how much time I had to do it, was to cut everything in half, even though I was moving to approximately the same square footage. I didn't want to still feel overwhelmed and hemmed in, so I planned to half everything. Many things were easy to do this with and in fact much was cut into a fourth or fifth or even sixth. Books I set a separate goal of cutting out a third, hoping with that goal I might take a fourth out the door. But life if full of surprises. So adept had I gotten at creating my own little TARDIS, I didn't realize how much the half I kept would still be.
Organizational experts will tell you things like "If you hadn't read it, listened to it, worn it, otherwise used it in a year, carry it out the door." Not bad advice, but advice which needs to be taken with a bit of wisdom. Last year I read two books which had been on my shelves unread for twenty years (for the curious, "Matilda" and "The Phantom Toolbooth") - books which I immediately added to my "favorites" list, and therefore to my "to be shared" and "to be read again and again" lists. Had I simply gleaned them from my library unread, I would've been poorer for it - even if I wouldn't have known. But with the magic only books contain, I knew now was the time to read them, and as I've tried to cut my books by a third, those survived. Following the wisdom, though, I donated to friends, family and thrift stores books which no longer piqued my curiosity even if they had when initially bought, and books which I enjoyed ten-twenty years ago but which I'm reasonably certain I won't re-read, along with their sequels, many of which I never quite got to. In the same vein, going through my closet allowed me to get rid of clothes in perfectly good condition but which I no longer care for the color or style of, and clothes I'd outgrown - and ironically, the clothes I hadn't worn for over a year because they were too big, fit perfectly well now and that revamped my wardrobe without straining my wallet!
All that to say, there's something to the if-you-haven't-used-it philosophy. The rules of six months or a year or three years aren't the point, and don't fit every situation, but I think I'd gotten too caught up at finding a rule that fir every situation I ended up doing nothing for far too long. Deciding my rule would be "If it's truly important now, keep it; if not, lose it" gives me permission to say goodbye to some things, hold on to others awhile longer without guilt. And that "awhile longer" in some cases ended up being a mere week. As often as I have experienced "Buyer's Remorse", I didn't want to substitute it with "Donator's Remorse" which is less common but which I had experienced often enough that the fear of it had caused me to hold on too long to certain things. The gardening analogy here might be, "Well, there are a lot of rocks and weeds here and the soil is dried and lifeless, but the seed is still there and it might come up if I wait long enough..."
Through having a garden in plastic pots on my porch and kitchen windowsill the past couple years ago has taught me a few life lessons. Noticing how plants grow, wither, recover and flourish again has taught me that while transplanting a plant traumatizes it, the amount of care given it during the transplanting process and directly after in its new place in the sun, say a great deal on how that plant is going to bounce back and flourish, even beyond its former splendor. I have been blessed these last two months with family and friends encouraging me, and helping me to maintain my vision, and committing to be there come moving day (which is looming frightfully near!) I have been blessed with seeing, in many small ways, my creativity returning, even amidst the chaos and disarray of keep-don't-keep-and-empty-boxes-for-each. And I've been blessed with seeing my enthusiasm slowly returning; what little bit I'd even noticed it had gone away was marred by the fact I wasn't enthusiastic enough to care about it returning.
One of my favorite quotes is by Neal A Maxwell:
“The harrowing of the soul can be like the harrowing of the soil to increase the yield, things are turned upside down.”
I'm being uprooted. The choice wasn't mine, save for the fact I'd prayed for new opportunities to grow and opportunities t get out of the rut I'd felt myself in. The choice of when wasn't mine; the choice of where is, and the choice of whether or not I will thrive - or in the words given to my friend in answer to prayer, the words which prompted this blog for me - bloom where I am planted - that's my choice, too.
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