Friday...
It's a beautiful sunny day here, and that's very good news. I'll get more done, and get it done more easily.
Yesterday George started tackling the task of clearing out the shelves and drawers in his room, and discovered two things very quickly. First, that it's a task much like looking up a word in the dictionary; you keep getting distracted by all the stuff you'd forgotten you had and spending time looking at that stuff instead of sticking doggedly to the process of decluttering. And second, that it sounds like a task that's easy to do, but it involves a lot of bending and reaching and stooping and scrabbling around on your knees that's hard on an aging body. He found box after box of slides he didn't know he had, from decades ago, and kept giving in to the temptation to look at just one more of those. He found videogames he had no memory of ever buying or ever bringing home. He found book after book he'd forgotten he had, and kept giving in to the temptation to read just a few more pages. He ended up, after a couple of hours, with one box of throwaways and a lot of aches and pains.
I'm familiar with all of these phenomena, and am subject to the same temptations. Which makes decluttering an extraordinarily slow sort of work, even when you start with the best intentions and a firm determination not to look at anything, no matter how tempting.
I have huge stacks of the materials I've used in my newsletters, all with a tidy "used" note on them, plus the name and date of the issue I used them in, going back all the way to 1980. And I know that the only way I'm going to be able to get rid of all that stuff is by absolutely not looking at it. I need to just pack it up in plastic bags for George to take to the recycling center, without so much as glancing at the contents, or that task will never, never be finished. Do I have the necessary backbone to do that? Gentle Reader, I do not know. I hope I do.
I have the same problem with all the materials for our family history, that will be passed on eventually to my older daughter, who is the official Family Historian. I start with the firm intention to just throw away anything that's not important to keep, and the first thing I know, there I sit reading letters written in 1945 and looking at photos from the 1930s, and getting nothing done.
The work for my consulting project is going smoothly, however; I have my July/August newsletter finished in first draft, and once in a while I get in a paragraph or two on the new novel. I'm ignoring the jungle outside my door, as all you wise people have advised me to do; I'm not even pruning. George has been keeping up with the mowing, which he points out involves only riding around on the mower out in the sunshine and fresh air. True.
Yesterday George started tackling the task of clearing out the shelves and drawers in his room, and discovered two things very quickly. First, that it's a task much like looking up a word in the dictionary; you keep getting distracted by all the stuff you'd forgotten you had and spending time looking at that stuff instead of sticking doggedly to the process of decluttering. And second, that it sounds like a task that's easy to do, but it involves a lot of bending and reaching and stooping and scrabbling around on your knees that's hard on an aging body. He found box after box of slides he didn't know he had, from decades ago, and kept giving in to the temptation to look at just one more of those. He found videogames he had no memory of ever buying or ever bringing home. He found book after book he'd forgotten he had, and kept giving in to the temptation to read just a few more pages. He ended up, after a couple of hours, with one box of throwaways and a lot of aches and pains.
I'm familiar with all of these phenomena, and am subject to the same temptations. Which makes decluttering an extraordinarily slow sort of work, even when you start with the best intentions and a firm determination not to look at anything, no matter how tempting.
I have huge stacks of the materials I've used in my newsletters, all with a tidy "used" note on them, plus the name and date of the issue I used them in, going back all the way to 1980. And I know that the only way I'm going to be able to get rid of all that stuff is by absolutely not looking at it. I need to just pack it up in plastic bags for George to take to the recycling center, without so much as glancing at the contents, or that task will never, never be finished. Do I have the necessary backbone to do that? Gentle Reader, I do not know. I hope I do.
I have the same problem with all the materials for our family history, that will be passed on eventually to my older daughter, who is the official Family Historian. I start with the firm intention to just throw away anything that's not important to keep, and the first thing I know, there I sit reading letters written in 1945 and looking at photos from the 1930s, and getting nothing done.
The work for my consulting project is going smoothly, however; I have my July/August newsletter finished in first draft, and once in a while I get in a paragraph or two on the new novel. I'm ignoring the jungle outside my door, as all you wise people have advised me to do; I'm not even pruning. George has been keeping up with the mowing, which he points out involves only riding around on the mower out in the sunshine and fresh air. True.