CREATIVE COMMUNITY: the antidote to creative clutter

Last night, I taught the first session of a two-meeting offering of my DeClutter Your Creativity class. As I sat around the workshop table, it is not an exaggeration to say that I was absolutely awed by the intelligence, humor, insight, strength and energy of the participants. Each is truly an extraordinary woman. And part of that extraordinary quality, I think, is that each sees her life and creativity as a work in progress, something that both changes on its own and requires conscious change over time to respond to new challenges, new opportunities, new wishes, new needs, new visions.

As I sat talking and laughing with these women, I was struck by how different this form of decluttering is from the usual approach to it. I don't know about you, but most of the decluttering efforts I have made over the years have been done in solitude and with some level of shame, frustration, and confusion. They have been marked by a kind of grim determination to "get it done" rather than a spirit of celebration or joy. And though I wasn't conscious of it at the time, they have been imbued with a sense of aloneness, a tacit assumption that I am the only person in the world to have too many mementos or beads or collage papers or old photos or...well, you get the idea.

But as last night reminded me, that sense of aloneness is nothing short of a lie: a profound and profoundly destructive untruth.

Everyone who tries to live their life consciously is involved in a more or less constant process of clearing out the past.

Everyone who engages in a creative practice of any kind--humble or grand, public or private, literary or artistic or musical--is involved in a more or less constant process of reinventing their work, their process and themselves.

And there is something healing about being reminded that we are all on this same journey together, walking side by side.

Next time you think about clearing out or decluttering, don't start the process with ten plastic bins, an afternoon alone, and an attitude of heroic self-discipline.

End there if you must. But start by reaching out to at least one person like yourself, who "gets" how glorious you are and how inevitable this kind of work is.

Start the work of decluttering with a sense of community.

Release what no longer serves you by remembering the human connections that do serve you.

Begin to let go of what you have by affirming all that you are.

If you do, I promise that the decluttering journey will go more smoothly, reflect your needs more authentically, and get done more quickly.

If you would like to join one of my DeClutter Your Creativity workshops or groups to help start a decluttering journey amid others like yourself, I would be honored to walk this walk with you. But this is not a plug for my work. Though I hope my offerings bring helpful ideas and helpful pepple to the table I want to be utterly clear that you don't need me. You can make the creative human connection I suggest above with one good friend and a phone.

Creative community and authentic connection are the antidotes to clutter.

Try them, and you'll see.