the decluttered creative

DON'T LOOK NOW: I'm writing

2011-04-29T13:12:00.000-07:00

You might have noticed that I haven't been posting on my blogs lately.

For the first time in several years, I've been writing.

Writing regularly. Writing productively. Writing books. Or at least things that vaguely look like books, and will look more like books, I hope, as the year goes on.

I didn't post this earlier for two reasons.

First, like almost all creative people, I'm a worrier. I worried that to say that I'm writing my books again is to court writers' block.

Second, like almost all creative people, I'm grandiose. (Yup, grandiosity plus paranoia: the magical blend that makes us creatives special.) I thought that I could write on two of my own books, plus teach and consult, plus do that all daily stuff like pay bills ands wash dishes, plus blog.

Look at the gap between the date of this post and the date of my last one and you'll see how well that fantasy worked out.

And so today I'm bucking up, paring down, getting real, and becoming the true decluttering creative servant leader I should be.

Lovingly and with gratitude, I'm decluttering this blog until further notice. I may come back here; I may start a whole new blog based on my new work. Either way, I'll let you know.

Wish me luck...and when in doubt, clear everything you can off your own plate except the very juiciest morsels. Let nothing that is not both nutritious and delicious stay.

I'll be there in spirit with you. In the meantime, yours in the creative sisterhood,

Suz

TELL THE TRUTH: don't we all love clutter?

2011-03-17T20:03:00.000-07:00

My last few posts have been musing on the invisible phases of creativity, the times when we are consciously or unconsciously doing deep inner work even though we seem quiet or even dormant superficially.

During these fallow off-seasons, we have to do some very hard work.

And the hardest work of all, maybe, is not doing the wrong work.

Because doing some work, any work, can feel very tempting at such times. We're conditioned to be busy 24/7. To be productive. To get things done. To make progress. To move forward. To push on. Not just to "task," to multitask.

The mere fact that these phrases are so familiar speaks to how powerful these impulses are in our culture.

That's why I say that if we tell the truth, we all secretly love clutter. Not physical clutter, but time clutter, work clutter, creativity clutter, social clutter, media clutter. On some level, most of us love filling up our to-do lists, cramming our lives and time full to bursting. We love it because it makes us feel normal. Worthwhile.Needed. Safe.

Or maybe that's just me. Either way, I see a lot of that kind of that "busywork" as I look back on my life. In my defense, I didn't know it was "filler" at the time. I had lots of "good reasons" for doing it. And I'm proud to say that I did some of it, even lots of it, very well.

But doing the not-quite-right work well doesn't make it any less wrong.

I think it takes an odd kind of courage, in modern America, to refuse the clutter, to wait for clarity or the "real thing," to sit with our own emptiness.

To embrace the space, not give in to the clutter.

To trust that the creative well will fill up again, that the path will appear, that the daffodils will bloom.

I'm not very good at it yet. But I'm trying.

THE LONG SILENCE: rilke and creative hiatus

2011-03-16T18:52:00.000-07:00

Writing about deep hidden creativity yesterday brought to mind the life and work of German poet Rainer Maria Rilke, a poet I often find challenging and sometimes find miraculous. I had vaguely remembered that ten years or so of silence passed between the beginnings of one of his poem cycles and its completion. I didn't remember that the poems were the Duino Elegies or that the decade it took to write them—most of it spent not writing them—was that from 1912 to 1922, but those are indeed the facts.

I don't bring up Rilke to compare my process or practice in any way to his immeasurably greater one. My point, in fact, is the opposite. This brilliant and accomplished writer, living in an extraordinarily beautiful place (the Duino Elegies are named after Duino Castle, pictured above right) as the guest of a titled family, had to try for ten years to finish a series of only ten poems. Admittedly, Rilke's silent decade happened to include World War I, which happened to involve Rilke's native Germany. And equally importantly, Rilke was too soulful and too shrewd to turn out mediocre poems while his Muse, well, a-muse-d herself elsewhere. But still, what can us mere mortals expect of ourselves if greats like Rilke have to wait a decade for their real work to emerge?

The poem below is not one of the Elegies, but it seems apposite to this post in some way. Absence and presence, life and lack, sight and insight are its themes, and as a bonus it has what may be one of the greatest last lines in all of poetry. The poem is called Archaic Torso of Apollo, or just Archaic Torso. Rilke wrote in German; this is one of Stephen Mitchell's always deft translations, which also include excellent versions of classic spiritual texts such as the Tao Te Ching, Gilgamesh, Bhagavad Gita, and the Book of Job, among others. You can find out more about Mitchell's work on his excellent website, though if you like me are creatively quiet at the moment his aray of wonderful books may be just a tad depressing for a moment.

Archaic TorsoRainer Maria Rilke

We cannot know his legendary head
with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso
is still suffused with brilliance from inside,
like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low,
gleams in all its power. Otherwise
the curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor could
a smile run through the placid hips and thighs
to that dark center where procreation flared.
Otherwise this stone would seem defaced
beneath the translucent cascade of the shoulders
and would not glisten like a wild beast's fur:
would not, from all the borders of itself,
burst like a star: for here there is no place
that does not see you. You must change your life.

UNDERGROUND: the fertility of deep withdrawal

2011-03-15T18:15:00.000-07:00

I love blogging, as I was reminded when I worked to prep my Saturday Blogging the Arts class at the Vero Beach Museum of Art. I love the writing and the thinking, the connecting and the sharing, the fresh perspectives and the plethora of facets.

Yet I've been entirely silent this past month, at least in my little personal blogosphere.

Some of that silence came from practical challenges. More of it came from creative fire. It was one of those months when ideas came fast and confusions became clear. The inner work I did with joy and fervor didn't produce much in the way of external results. At least, not yet. But I'm confident that it will, and in a variety of ways.

There are times—many times—in creative lives that are dedicated to actual work. There are also times for creative re-visioning of the sort that is work, but doesn't produce work. I tend to feel a little nervous about the latter. There's too much traditional work ethic in me to trust them easily. Yet such times have been among the most powerful, the most transformative, of my life. One of them, in fact, made me a writer.

The mid-March date today reminds me of the daffodil bulbs of my Northern childhood. Invisible all year, the vivid green shoots would suddenly appear, in greater profusion than the year before and often in places we didn't remember ever planting a bulb.

At the point when the yard or the hill were dotted with yellow flutes, they seemed as unearned and mysterious as magic. That's how long ago and far away the boring, back-bending work of bulb planting seemed.

But at that time of planting, the eventual appearance of flowers seemed just as unreal, just as unlikely. How could it be, that hiding these rustling little brown onions into the earth would produce those bursts of life so many months and seasons later?

BRILLIANT BITS: insights from the DeClutter Your Creativity Group

2011-02-18T13:38:00.000-08:00

The monthly Bookstrategy DeClutter Your Creativity group is a part of my life I've come to enjoy deeply--a chance to dialogue with other creative women about the challenges and opportunities that affect us all.

Luckily, that's true even at times like this past Tuesday's meeting, when my own energy is either flagging or "off." Get a group of deeply creative women together, and some or all of them will be brilliant on any given night!

Two comments offered in the course of Tuesday's discussion stood out for me as especially valuable.

The first was to live in your truth...now.
It was the "now" part of that statement that hit me with renewed force. It reminded me that our truth in this present moment isn't necessarily the same as a truth that was authentic for us a decade, a year, even a month ago.

A piece, or size, of clothing. A particular art or craft. A habit. A relationship. A belief. A collection. Are there any of these in your life that were part of the truth of your past, but may not remain equally authentic in your present? If so, it is a great place to start decluttering.

The second bit of wisdom that really spoke to me was that one of the disabling forms of emotional clutter any of us carry is the belief that we are somehow different than others, and different in negative ways.

We might think that compared to "everyone else" we're more distracted. Less confident. More disorganized. Less creative. More confused. Less knowlegeable.

When we believe in these kinds of difference, we keep tend to ourselves isolated...ashamed...stuck. Needless to say, these are not feelings that lend themselves to creativity.

When we face and test them, we shed a limiting part of emotional clutter and free ourselves up both to connect and create. And that's a much more powerful kind of decluttering than even the most vigorous physical clearing-out.

If you're in the Vero Beach, FL area, consider joining us for this donation-only monthly group. You can find more information on my BookStrategy website.

DECLUTTERING OUR MONEY: have you made a home for yours?

2011-02-02T12:45:00.000-08:00

As I began to look at the way money "clutter" affects my creativity, I immediately discovered something interesting.

Despite the large and lovely spaces in my house, my money-related stuff has no single home here. I keep checks in one place, stamps and envelopes in another, records in still another. Some of my bills arrive via email, some via snail mail, which I pick up from the post office, put on the breakfast bar, and get to in some moment when I'm not busy at other things. I sit down and pay bills, or handle other financial matters, in a variety of places--the breakfast bar, my bed, my dining room table. No problem, except that I almost always leave a trail of stuff that then has to be put away in what seems like twenty different places.

As I said in my previous post, I'm quite good at getting things handled on time despite this hit-or-miss, here-or-there methodology. Yet I know that the price I pay for it is high in other ways. I may seem organized to the folks at FPL or FICO or American Express, but I don't feel it. Low-level money fogginess invades my mind often, sometimes when there's actually nothing wrong. I work much harder on trivial financial tasks than I have to, and spend less time than I'd like thinking about bigger money issues.

On a symbolic level, I think, not giving our money a true home in our space speaks volumes about how much we honor it and the role it plays in sustaining our lives in general and our creative work in particular. If I don't respect this aspect of my life enough to carve out a little physical space for it, how good can my stewardship of it truly be? If I begrudge my money a couple of square feet and a little organization, can I really complain if it doesn't work for me with optimal results? To my mind, the answers are "not very" and "hell no." I don't say this in judgment of myself or anyone else. I've never yet met a woman whose family trained her in financial management or encouraged her to make space or time for her money. And when we enter the world of the creative arts, money dis-ease becomes a badge of honor. It's not surprising that so many of us avoid money matters when we can, hurry through them when we must, and leave them homeless in gorgeous, thoughtful residences that have room for everything else.

I'm currently in the process of giving my money its own functional and appealing space in my home. I've made a space under the giant vision board some of you have seen in my home office and given financial records a whole file drawer. (Whoo-hoo!) I've gathered envelopes, stamps, pens I like, a letter opener, a scissors. I've dedicated a simple monthly planner to recording what bills are due, when they're due, and what and when I've paid. I've put a chair near that area to remind me to work on it there and some wonderful images right above it to remind me why it's worth my time.

I have to admit that this feels childish at times, like I'm setting up an Easy Bake Oven in the living room and pretending to be a chef. That feeling disconcerted me at first, but I realized pretty quickly that it's perfectly appropriate.

At fifty-five, a novelist and a poet and a memoirist and a teacher, an owner of my own business and a veteran of management roles in financial organizations and the former owner of a New York apartment, with a house that has an art room and a writing room and a reading room and a lounge, I'm just now taking baby steps on decluttering my money issues.

So setting up an Easy Bake Oven equivalent—let's call it Shaky Suzy's Marvelous Mini Money Mart—is probably right on target.

Wanna come over and play?

DECLUTTERING OUR MONEY: a first step

2011-01-13T07:30:00.000-08:00

This month, my Vero Beach DeClutter Your Creativity Group will begin exploring the issue of money as it creates physical and emotional clutter and/or impedes our creativity. I'm excited to begin addressing an issue that affects almost all of us "creatives," yet is relatively rarely talked about in searching ways. In conjunction with the Group meetings, I'll be posting some thoughts on these issues here on this blog.

(If you're in the Treasure Coast area and this topic interests you, consider joining us at our next Group meeting on Tuesday, January 18 at 6:00. Rather than charge a fee, I ask for donations of whatever you wish to give--five bucks is fine. There is no official signup or membership; just email me for location and directions and to let me know to expect you!)

Let me kick off this new topic with a bit of personal confession, if you will. One of the things I've done, and done best, for others during my career is organizing complex systems: the admissions system of a graduate arts school, the editing and signoff system for a major New York City Mayor's Office biannual report. Yet my own money systems remain pretty disorganized year after year. I don't really have a place that bills or the financial process "lives," I don't consistently keep up with filing and paperwork, I often don't know exactly what's there. I don't even have a set time to handle bill paying, much less other financial work.

My memory of deposits, payment dates, and so on are good enough to keep my money management basically on track despite this. But as I began to realize late last year, I still pay a price for this inattention. I live with more physical clutter than I have to in terms of bills and papers. And, far more important, I live with more anxiety than necessary thanks to this approach. Feeling vague or foggy about my money isn't truly comfortable. I know, deep inside, that I'm not on top of this, and also that I'm not spending enough time on my money to get optimal results.

It's surprised how hard it was to write those words, and to contemplate posting them on the blog. Struggles with money just don't feel "normal" to talk about. That sense of fearfulness is one of the things I want to talk about at the Group. The biggest kind of clutter that money produces for me and most creatives, I suspect, is this feeling of secrecy and shame. I hope that entering into a dialogue about the fraught issue of finances will help many of us clear up some of the blockages those feelings create.

THE STUFF WE LEAVE BEHIND: "Important Artifacts" by Leanne Shapton

2011-01-10T09:13:00.000-08:00

Leanne Shapton's Important Artifacts is not officially about decluttering, but it's still of interest to those of us striving to release all that no longer works from our lives. It's also a wonderful work of creative imagination.

Fully titled Important Artifacts and Personal Property from the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris, Including Books, Street Fashion, and Jewelry, the book is a fictional auction catalog of items remaining from a love affair that has now failed. Though the owners and story are invented, the catalog contains actual pictures of objects from the ridiculous to the sublime. Together, they chronicle the story of a relationship in a way that is sometimes wry, sometimes sad, and always telling. It's not easy to tell a love story in a new way, but Shapton does it beautifully. You can't but look at this book without wondering how your own objects would tell your life stories if they were organized and disposed of some day. Or, at least, I couldn't.

Shapton's first book, Was She Pretty?, also mixes images and text to talk about love in a fresh and nuanced way. Browse the books and her illustrations, art, and ideas on her whimsical and inspiring website.

CLUTTER UP YOUR CREATIVITY: cravable stuff we TOTALLY don't need

2011-01-07T15:51:00.000-08:00

A visit to the Nanda Home website inspired this first in a new category of posts on this blog that will acknowledge stuff that is totally and utterly unnecessary, and yet somehow work celebrating.

I have long craved a Clocky, the alarm clock on wheels that jumps off your nighttable and runs around your room beeping if you hit "snooze" too often. Clocky was invented by Gauri Nanda, apparently in response to her frequent tardiness at her MIT graduate classes. I don't need it as a clock, as I rarely have trouble getting up; instead, it seemed just like an adorable cross between a mechanical toy and a very easy-to-care for pet.

But now, sadly, poor Clocky has been upstaged in my crazy-object wish list by what Nanda calls "Clocky's tech-savvy younger brother," Tocky. Tocky is a little round fellow who not only jumps and rolls around on the floor but also plays both MP3s and your own recorded sounds. I have given you the YouTube video of him here. (It's from the thinkgeek YouTube channel but is the same video you'll see on the official Nanda site.) I must confess that I sometimes go to the Nanda website just to get a smile from the little guy. Yes, I know, that's really pathetic...but then, true love often is.

What are your secret totally unnecessary object cravings?

CULLING MY BOOKS: on reading, reveling, and releasing

2011-01-05T09:00:00.000-08:00

Part of my silent time over the past two months has been occupied with the process of sorting through my possessions. "Sorting through" sounds simple and rather serene, but in reality the process is tedious and messy. I gave away or otherwise disposed of the stuff that was easy years ago. What is left is there for a reason. Usually, even, a good one.

Still, something in my soul said that it was time for much of it to go.

Culling my collection of books was one of the more interesting, and oddly enough for a writer the easiest, parts of the process. Perhaps because my work requires me to acquire new books regularly, I've never been especially reluctant to let the older ones go. It's easy to imagine someone else, in say our local library's Used Book Depot, enjoying the volume I've just donated—to imagine, that is to say, the cycle of ownership and reading continuing pleasantly and productively on before and beyond the point in time I happen to own a book. And it's always been clear to me that if I don't empty the shelves out fairly regularly, the house will all too quickly become overrun.

My test for keeping books is generally simple, consisting of only three questions. Do I truly love the book? Do I return to it regularly? Is it out of print, and likely to remain out of print for the foreseeable future? Of the three questions the last is the most practical and sometimes the most compelling. Living in a small town rather than my old home ground of New York City, the lesser works of, say, W.H. Auden or Virginia Woolf are not easy to obtain; even online old-book resources such as Alibris can be spotty in terms of book availability and price. Some of the paperback editions of so-called "literary" authors I bought back in the seventies are thus real treasures to me, in contrast to recent and/or mainstream novels and nonfiction that the library is likely to own and that Amazon and other retailers are equally likely to stock.

So I let go of several shelf-fulls of contemporary novels and nonfiction with only the slightest qualm. More difficult were a group of books on writing I like, but which don't meet the test of my first or second questions. Even more difficult were some of the books from my father's personal library (the subject for a later blog post). Like most objects once owned by someone loved and lost, so to speak, these volumes were not valuable as books so much as what author Seth Godin calls "souvenirs." My three practical questions didn't apply to them well; instead, a whole other kind of scrutiny had to take place.

As always seems to be the case in the aftermath of one of these book clearing-outs, I have found myself reading more widely than usual in my own collection of books. I am inspired to revisit authors I had forgotten, discovering that I like so-and-so more than I used to and so-and-so less, being surprised that I never finished one book or that I made the notes I did in another. In this way my little library comes alive again right at the times some of it is passing on, as though the very process of loss have intensified its pleasure and value...not unlike, say, life itself.

ENOUGH ALREADY

2011-01-03T19:19:00.000-08:00

It was interesting to see the beginnings of Oprah's new television network, OWN, this weekend. I was particularly pleased to notice that one of my favorite experts on decluttering, Peter Walsh, will have a show called "Enough Already" on the network. Walsh, who anchored a program called "Clean Sweep" some years ago and has appeared frequently on Oprah since, is thoughtful, warm, feisty, and very clear about the emotional elements of clutter. I vividly remember seeing him ask a Clean Sweep participant how they were honoring the grandmother whose furniture they clung to when that furniture was dusty and piled with other things. It was fine to keep the things if they felt essential, he argued, but if they were indeed that precious, wouldn't they be clean...polished...used...cared for? Sounds simple, I know, but the question of whether we are honoring our memories merely by keeping "stuff" that is neglected is a powerful one. Anyway, the show should be interesting for anyone interested in decluttering practices that move beyond mere physical organization into more challenging and more liberating discoveries. Walsh also has a new book, Lighten Up: Love What You Have, Have What You Need, and Be Happier With Less, that approaches decluttering with a particular emphasis on the economic constraints that affect so many of us today. I haven't read it yet, but it might be a useful text.

OUT WITH THE OLD

2011-01-02T19:05:00.000-08:00

Some of you who follow my blogs have commented on my rather protracted absence since sometime in October. I found myself going into and through a long period of exploration beginning at about that time. It was a decluttering of sorts, though one which illustrated the precept I repeat most often (and probably most annoyingly) in my decluttered creative classes: that decluttering is not, and never, just about the stuff.

That said, I have indeed released a lot of physical stuff in these last months. I sold six or seven boxes of antiques and a lovely daybed and desk that I had owned and loved for decades, but which no longer really fit my needs. I donated lots of books, linens, and other odds and ends to various good causes. I gave one friend lots of the plants and garden accessories I no longer truly want to care for and another a box of supplies for art forms I don't think I'll ever do. I did a lot of financial housecleaning as well, consolidating accounts and shredding old records and generally making space.

I also changed around most of the main living space of my house. That was a kind of decluttering, too: a releasing of the way I used to live and the spaces I used to like. The house had looked nice aesthetically, at least I thought so, but some of it just wasn't me any more. It ended up being a rather more monumental shifting-about than I had expected--I realized by the end that I had actually moved every major piece of furniture in my living and dining area and a goodly portion of the furnishings elsewhere. I reimagined colors, repurposed spaces, and just generally shook things up. It wasn't an expensive redo; almost everything in the new spaces is something I already owned except for the paint on the walls and some minor accessories, most of which I bought at thrift shops. But the overall style, the effect, and the feeling of the spaces is surprisingly different. I feel much more comfortable within this refreshed nest, and I can already feel how much more suited it is for the year of writing I plan for twenty-eleven.

Finally and most profoundly, I did a lot of inner decluttering as well. I found myself newly ready to look at my schedule, my habits, my business, my priorities, my money, my company...well, pretty much everything. I am not precisely sure where all of this re-exploration will take me, and I'm trying to be okay with that uncertainty. What I do know is that the uncertainty actually feels more authentic than some of last year's certainties and assumptions did, and that feels good. I have a sense of getting closer to that which is most important to me as the new year opens, and a sense of curiousity and excitement that is actually quite fun.

So that's what I've been doing on my autumn vacation. I look forward to connecting with all of you other decluttering creatives again through this blog and the class schedule I'm beginning to craft for the spring. And I wish you a year of decluttering, creativity, and change.

STEVE JOBS on decluttering your heart

2010-10-29T19:22:00.000-07:00

When I wrote my 10/28 "Decluttering Your Heart" post, I didn't expect to follow up its Sarah ban Breathnach quote with one by Steve Jobs.

But a recent email contained the link to an interview former Apple CEO John Sculley conducted with Steve Jobs, Apple's visionary co-founder. The lengthy interview is interesting on business grounds, but it also contained a quote relevant to decluttering. "What makes Steve’s methodology different from everyone else’s is that he always believed the most important decisions you make are not the things you do – but the things that you decide not to do. He’s a minimalist," Sculley said.

It makes sense. We all know that visionaries don't change the culture by trying to do everything. They focus on one thing, at most a small handful of things, passionately, even if others can't figure out why they're doing it. But following that model is easier said than done. Right now, I'm struggling with getting even minor things off my desk, schedule, and mind. Everything, and everyone, seems equally important, and it feels hard if not impossible to find the time I need to get in touch with what truly matters.

It's tempting to think that famous, accomplished people don't experience that kind of struggle...that it's somehow easy for them to decide what to do and what not to. But that fantasy isn't borne out when you look at Steve Jobs' life, or the life of any other topnotch creative. As far back as his decision to drop out of college, Jobs has clearly experienced just as many points of confusion and choice as us "ordinary people" do.

But as Sculley noted, he's clearly also learned how to clear out, let go, and move on. And because he's so famous, we can get some glimpses of how he does it.Here's one such glimpse, from his 2005 commencement address at Stanford University. (Watch the speech here—it's inspiring throughout.) I love the last two lines:

"When I was 17 I read a quote that went something like "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself, "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "no" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something. Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important thing I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life, because almost everything--all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure--these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart."

DECLUTTERING THE HEART

2010-10-28T18:13:00.000-07:00

In the course of adding links to yesterday's post, I came across an interview Debra Pickeet conducted with Sarah ban Breathnach way back in 2006.

Most of the material there was of course outdated, but one line caught my eye.

"It's about de-cluttering the heart before the closet," Ban Breathnach said, speaking about the domestic transitions that inspired her Moving On: Creating Your House of Belonging with Simple Abundance.

Decluttering the heart before the closet. Perhaps because they are in some ways mysterious, subject to a variety of possible interpretations, the words resonate for me in many ways. Indeed, they express one of the key things I hope my DeCluttering Your Creativity classes and groups encourage participants to do.

As I've learned from personal experience, decluttering our closets doesn't work unless we also clear out our hearts, our souls, and our imaginations. It's internal clutter—unmourned losses and unhealed wounds from our pasts, unexamined fears about our futures—that most powerfully drives external clutter and the behaviors that create it. If you're like me, it's tempting to attack things the other way around, to clean out the closet first and expect the heart to change in response. But genuinely satisfying as the physical clearing-out may be, I've found that it tends not to endure if clutter in the heart and soul are left behind.

Decluttering the heart is harder than decluttering the closet. It takes more patience, more thought, and more compassion. Above all, it takes more courage. Luckily, most of us have considerably more courage than we think. We move out some of that heart clutter and find it there: forgotten or even abandoned, half-hidden, yet glowing and strong.

LITTLE BITES

2010-10-27T18:13:00.000-07:00

At our most recent DeClutter Your Creativity group, we discussed finding ways to nurture ourselves through the kind of simple, brief actions that fit into even the most hectic schedule. As an example, we looked at some books that are structured in little "bites" rather than lengthy texts. Some of the examples we talked about are listed below. If you have a different book of this kind you like, do please let us know about it by commenting on this post.

Simple Abundance by Sarah ban Breathnach. A classic among women's daybooks, this rich collection offers a year's worth of mini-essays on the places where simplification and richness (of all kinds) meet.

Until Today! by Iyanla Vanzant focuses on letting go of what doesn't work emotionally and spiritually to move into a less burdened and more authentic life. Her approach is more intense than ban Breathnach's, and more focused on healing wounds and pain. Yet it's still accessible, and powerful, even if read or used a single page at a time.

Meditations for Women who Do Too Much by Anne Wilson Schaef spawned a mini-industry of books, cards, journals, and calendars, and for good reason. It really hit a nerve in modern women, and even the New York Times, not always kind to self-help, praised it. As with ban Breathnach's and Vanzant's books, its sequence of brief pieces helps readers center and focus themselves on even the most hectic days.

The Courage to Change by the Al-Anon Family Group Inc. is designed to help readers one day at a time, as all AA programs do. Its Al-Anon origin focuses it on drawing clear and loving boundaries between our lives, hearts and minds and those of others.

Wide Open by Randi Feuerholm-Watts gathers together a series of ideas to inspire creative journalling. Formatted as a group of cards, each with its own artwork on one side and text on the other, it's a fun and surprising way to create a bit of time for art-making or creativity each day, each week, or just whenever you can. I personally enjoy the card format, which allows me to pull one card at a time rather than using a whole book; others seem to like it too, so there are lots of "book products" now formatted this way.

Archetype Cards by Caroline Myss. One of the group's participants spoke about the use of tools like tarot cards to provide a relatively quick, intuitive "read" on what's going on inside in the midst of busy times. We all agreed that believing in or deeply understanding the Tarot, or any other system, isn't really necessary for this use; the value comes simply from taking a moment in touch with our deeper selves. I'm linking here to Caroline Myss's deck of archetype cards, which don't have the same fortunetelling element as the Tarot but still serve the purpose just mentioned. Myss writes widely and wisely about issues of well-being and energy, and that same wisdom is evident here. I especially like the way she offers both the "light" and "dark" faces of each archetype, reminding us that every one of the roles we play offers both constructive and destructive (or at least unhelpful) possibilities.

TOPPLING OVER

2010-10-27T09:09:00.000-07:00

This photo by Håken Dahlström immediately captured my attention and inspired a grin. The crazy angle of the structure is due in reality to the San Francisco hills, but it's also a funny image of the feeling of our houses inspired when we are too laden down with stuff: the sense that the whole structure could just topple over from its own weight.

Perhaps it's the weight of the owner's craft or art room that's making the house list to sharply to one side?

Or perhaps I'm just projecting?

(I've reprinted the photo on a limited rights permission basis from Flickr. Please do not reproduce or otherwise use without going through their site.)

I DIDN'T PLAN IN THE BEES

2010-10-19T13:03:00.000-07:00

There's a very good reason why the last ten days have seemed like a constant and uncomfortable rush of deadlines, occasonally punctuated by some restless sleep and/or some dazed looking around the home office wondering how it got like that.

It wasn't that some client deadlines unexpectedly converged, though they did.

It wasn't even that I compounded the problem by some overscheduling of my own, though I did.

It was that I didn't plan on the bees.

The bees, that is, that decided to make a nest under my house the week before last. I didn't know they were there at first, those stealthy little buggers, but by last week the buzzing was so loud I figured that something was up. Walking around the house I discovered a sizeable swarm flying in and out of the space under the foundation of my house. Being already short on time and highly allergic to bee stings, I did not take to this new tenancy kindly.

The owner of a local pest control company came out to the house promptly, and just as promptly eradicated most of the creatures (which, happily enough, turned out to be mild-mannered honeybees rather than their gangsta yellowjacket relations).

But the time used up making calls, finding the right company, making the appointment, and adjusting the schedule around both bees and bee-killing, not to mention an uneasy night spent wondering about the question "can the bees get inside the house somehow?" was just enough to throw everything else out of kilter.

The moral of this post is obvious. You have to plan on the bees. For bees, you can substitute: computer meltdown, spouse meltdown, flat tire, sick parent, tantruming child, tantruming client, sudden attack of scurvy, unexpected abduction by aliens, or [insert your most recent out of the blue crisis here].

In other words, you have to plan on the thing that can't be planned for. And then allot it at least a modicum of time.

When I'm at my best, I do this. I assume that something or other will go kerplooey and I make sure there is space and time to adjust. When I'm not at my best, I schedule to within a hairsbreadth of my maximum possible resources of time and energy.

And the bees get me, every time.

TIME NINJAS

2010-10-12T12:44:00.000-07:00

A friend sent me a link to the site of the Time Ninjas, two British women who explain themselves and their name as follows on their "About" page:

We are the Time Ninjas. Why? Erm. Well, Time creeps up on us and all that, so we thought we could turn the whole stealth thing back onto Time and surprise it. Kind of. But mainly because we liked the sound of it.

I got a kick out of the concept, the name, and the honesty with which they admit the less impressive reason to choose the name, i.e. the sound of it. Not that I, DeCluttered Creative and Working Writer Wonders, can relate to that.

They're currently doing a project that asks folks to pledge a specific amount of time...to themselves. I'm pondering that wise thought.

In the meantime, I browsed their blog and found this opening line in one of their posts: I know that sometimes the absolute best way to use my time is to stop.

A concept with which I wholly and fully agree in principle, but have trouble putting into practice, as all who know me are aware. Hence time can be a ninja that whomps me, rather than me being a time ninja that sneaks up and masters it.

LIBERATION in the place least looked for

2010-10-11T17:19:00.000-07:00

Originally known for her work as a book editor to the greats (and the grumpies) and then for her writing on aging, Diana Athill always speaks crisply, courageously, candidly, and without even the littlest bit of self-pity. Not surprisingly, her thoughts on moving into a retirement home at the age of 91 are both interesting and counter-intuitive. As Sarah Lyall points out in yesterday's New York Times, she found the experience of the move suprisingly freeing. “You gradually become aware of how liberating it is,”Athill says in Lyall's article (which is based, in turn, on a piece in the UK's Daily Telegraph). “Not a single domestic worry do I have.” And, she continues in the Telegraph,

At breakfast today I sat in my little room thinking how odd it is that I never get bored by my things. Then I realised that nothing in the room is here out of habit, or because it was given me by dear old so-and-so, or because I couldn’t be bothered to get rid of it. Everything, from the carpet to the biscuit tin and including of course the too-many pictures, ornaments and books, is here because, however uninteresting it might be to others, I love it. It’s as though “possessing” has been distilled down from being a vague pleasure to being an intense one: less is more. When I first saw the room in its bare state it shocked me: how could I possibly live in that tiny space? And now I am happy in it.

I love that comment, and its unexpectedness. If you do too, check out the Telegraph article in its entirety, and/or dip into one of the author's books.

I feel no desire to rush toward retirement-home living. Yet as I sit here today, I have to confess to the teensiest, eensiest bit of envy. I spent much of the morning finding someone to remove a swarm of honeybees from their nest under my house. (Thanks to Ronnie Slade of Clements Pest Control, who was prompt, personable, and reassuring despite the weirdness of a bee-proof suit.) I spent much of the afternoon making up for the morning. It's now evening, and I have a piled up desk, a piled-up mind, a piled-up laundry basket and a piled-up to-do list. If only there was a piled-up dinner plate waiting for me. Anyway, less stuff of all kinds looks pretty appealing right now.

Then again, Athill has emptied out her stuff but not her life. She still welcomes activity such as travel; in fact, her schedule makes me feel tired. "That is something all us oldies should bear in mind: until it becomes physically truly impossible, keep on doing things," she writes at the very end of the article. "In my experience it always turns out to be worth while."

A good reminder that having less doesn't necessary mean either doing less, or enjoying less...and that at 55, I'm not as old as I feel at the moment!

ON THE ROAD IN MY MIND

2010-09-26T07:53:00.000-07:00

Those who have shared my DeClutter Your Creativity classes or groups know that I often say that all clutter is mental or emotional, and that it's often an inevitable outgrowth of creativity and curiosity. Here's a funny example, brought to you by the constantly (and erratically?) firing cortex of my brain.

The architectural details of the little rolling house I saw on the Bohemian Hellhole blog and discussed in my previous post reminded me of something. That house is clearly American (Alice says it's part of the Burning Man Festival), but its shape and details evoked something else.

After a bit of thought I realized that the image I was thinking of was the (fictional) Ural Mountain estate called Varykino, as recreated in David Lean's film of Doctor Zhivago. I loved the houses of that film; in fact, I wrote an essay on them in my memoir Home Life, where I waxed lyrical about the beauty of the Varykino house when Zhivago returns it and finds its interiors muffled in snow and ice. So, being on line already, I had to find an image of that wonderful interior, which I now offer here.

But of course, I am committed to proper respect for copyright, so I then had to figure out who owns the copyright to screen captures/still photos from films. I'm sad to say I don't know. The image shown here is all over the web, but no one seems to credit the original source, or even identify who the copyright holder might be. For what it's worth, the film was made by Warner Brothers.

I did find out, however, that the Varykino scenes were shot in Spain...in the summer.

And then, having written in the draft of this post the phrase "firing neurons," I had to find out if it's actually neurons that fire when we have an idea or association. This search led me to a New Yorker Annals of Science article by Jonah Lehrer ("The Eureka Hunt," July 27, 2008) which guided me to change "neurons" to "cortex" and gave me the following quote, so lovely and so apt: the insight process is an act of cognitive deliberation transformed by accidental, serendipitous connections.

So there you go. From Nevada to Spain, with a detour through imaginary Russia and a dogleg through the idea-generating centers of the human brain, all in twenty-seven deeply enjoyable if totally unproductive minutes.
Clutter...or creativity? Creative...or just plain crazy?

Your call.

TINY TRICKED-OUT HOUSES

2010-09-25T07:26:00.000-07:00

This photo of a delightful little house on wheels comes from Alice, editor of the blog Bohemian Hellhouse, who describes herself delightfully as "a designer, a photographer, a musician, a seamstress, a scavenger, a gardener, a maid" and lists the following as her interests: music, design, legos, cameras, goodwill, movies, reading, writing, photography, sewing, coffee, road trips, demolition, antiques. new magazines, peeling paint, two headed dragon toys, french cookware, big kitchen sinks, free piles, sparkly lights, vintage fieldcrest bath towels, beat up wood, carl zeiss, little bits of paper, fancy boots. A true soul sister!

I love the details of this structure: the corbels under the eaves, the curtains in the windows, the staircase, the little solarium-thingie. Now that's what a mobile home should be.

I don't know about you, but when I see a house like this I immediately picture running (well, rolling) away from my real home, leaving my real stuff and my real obligations behind.

If you know me at all, you also know I will not do this or anything like it, even if I got myself a cute and cunning little house like this.. I'm simply too addicted to (a) dishware, (b) vintage textiles, (c) books, and (d) indoor plumbing.

Still, it's always nice to dream.

Thanks for a moment in Wonderland, Alice!

FALLEN ANGELS

2010-09-24T09:00:00.000-07:00

When I went to verify the Mary Shelley quotation I used in Thursday's post, I came across another that felt both striking and apt.

"The fallen angel becomes a malignant devil," she wrote in Frankenstein.

I don't like demonizing anything or anyone, so I'm not usually a fan of devil imagery. But this line really spoke to me, and in a way directly relevant to issues of clutter.

The part of each of us that longs for creative time, creative work, is angelic: powerful, pure, a thing drawn from the limitless skies.

When we don't nuture it, this powerful force doesn't die. Instead, it turns on us. Bedevils us, you might say.

The love for color, beauty, and abundance that inspires creative work transforms into destructive relationships with shopping or TV.

The desire for good tools with which to create new things transforms into a studio or office chock full of supplies or books—so full of them, in fact, that there is no room to do the work they were acquired for.

The passion and intensity that might fuel a novel, a play, or a piece of visual art transforms into rage, resentment, or a sense of martyrdom, or a flat, exhausted depression.

The curiosity that is intrinsic to all creativity transforms into endless hours of Web surfing.

Fallen angels; malignant devils.

The way to exorcise these malignant devils is neither to castigate nor to blame them.

It is to find the fallen angels each of them once were. To ask what dream or hope or passion or love each represented before we forced it "down to earth." To look through even our greatest messes for the feathery beauty of wings.

Somewhere in your clutter, I promise, you will glimpse them.

CLASSES AND GROUPS: "Friend. Good!"

2010-09-23T06:32:00.000-07:00

The quote in the post title above—"Friend. Good!"—is from Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's great novel Frankenstein, where it is uttered by Dr. Frankenstein's monster. I've always liked this tiny snippet, not just because friends are indeed good but also because it is so moving to hear these words uttered by a creature who is so many ways is monstrous, distorted, unlovable. They are deeply human words, from a painfully inhuman source.

I was reminded of this paradox by my recent DeClutter Your Creativity workshop and the first meeting of my mothly DeClutter Your Creativity group last Tuesday. When clutter of any kind overtakes us—in our space, our time, our obligations, our inner judgments or our inner demands—our first tendency is often to isolate ourselves. It feels safer when no one knows how overwhelmed we are. It feels safer when no one sees the way our stuff has taken over. It feels safer not to test the loyalty of those who claim to admire, like or love us. True, they've believed in us thus far...but surely when they realize how really (cluttered, messy, confused, fill in your own word here), they'll finally give up.

Clutter breeds confusion, self-doubt, and shame. Confusion, self-doubt and shame breed isolation. Isolation breeds clutter. So the cycle begins, and so it continues.

But it can be broken—and the best place to break it is not by clearing clutter, but by reaching out for companionship.

That's what is so deeply rewarding for me in offering my DeClutter Your Creativity classes and groups. I hope the content offered is helpful, but I'm also clear that the real transformation occurs as the participants talk, laugh, and bond. As each of them—each of us—sees that other competent, creative people struggle with the same issues we do, shame and isolation both begin to melt away. We change from isolated victims of inner wounds to a regiment of warriors all fighting the same battles, and from an assemblage of unconnected individuals to a group of friends.

We begin to feel human, rather than monstrous, again.

And from that moment, the cycle is broken, and the clutter begins, however slowly at first, to move away.

"Friend. Good!" Indeed. I thank all my students and group participants for reminding me of that. And I invite all of you who are reading this to reach out to someone today, now, no matter how many piles of stuff you have on your house or studio floor. Ask him or her over, or go out someplace fun. Do it first, before you try to clean up. If you can make it to the DeClutter Your Creativity group (next meeting is October 19 from 6 to 8 .m.), we'll welcome you with affection and laughter. But if not, just call a friend.

THE WARMTH OF WITNESS, part two

2010-08-26T09:00:00.000-07:00

Tuesday's post, The Warmth of Witness, Part One, talked about the value of having a companion with you to support and witness your decluttering efforts.
Once you've chosen someone to play that role, here are some guidelines to help ensure that the process will go smoothly. I should clarify before I start that you don't need to have only one decluttering witness. It's fine, and maybe even wiser, to ask different people to help with different decluttering spaces, goals or tasks. That said:

1. Make sure it is your declutter witness is someone you really feel good about. This isn't the time to try to bond with anyone who seems half-hearted, much less derogatory, controlling, or negative.
2. Watch out for hidden, or not so hidden, agendas about stuff, prosperity, clutter and decluttering. Sometimes even the nicest friend or family member has a perspective that will sabotage your effort. To name one common example, a spouse who values useful items over sentimental ones might undermine your efforts to sort through family memorabilia by calling it all "crap" that should be "tossed." Another example would be a friend who saves box after box of possessions. Because she is likely struggling with her own shame and self-blame, she might reassure you that cramming your closets with stuff is just fine or encourage you not to tackle your own clutter until you have more energy or time. Good as your spouse's or friend's intentions may be, their personal agenda will sabotage your decluttering work. It's better to find someone who has a more neutral or open perspective.
3. Chose a manageable amount of stuff to work on. Part of the purpose of this exercise is to build a little self-confidence. Don't sabotage yourself by trying to tackle too much at once.
4. Set a clear, strict limit on your working time. Two to three hours is about the outside limit. One to two hours is better. Stop when you've planned to stop. Working on until your energy flags is a setup for failure.
5. Before the decluttering session begins, get very clear in your own mind what your goal is. Is it: to figure out what's actually in a pile of bins or boxes? Come up with a load of donations to be dropped off at the nearest Goodwill? Sort piles of miscellaneous stuff into categories? Clear out a particular closet or cupboard? Find items that belong to your ex-husband for delivery or discarding? The more specific and concrete you can be, the easier it will be to feel that you've succeeded.
6. Tell your witness clearly what you need and don't need. This is the sticking point for most of us. We hem and haw when it comes to—gasp! Heaven forbid—burdening someone else, so we tend to skip right over requests about what the help we're requesting actually looks like. Don't feel presumptuous or selfish being clear about your needs or limits; try to see your guidance as something that will help both you and your witness feel comfortable. Some sample requests follow. Though each is different, look how specific each one is.

I'd love it if you would pull out any papers you see and put them in this bin. Once they're together, I can bring them home and cull out what I still need. Right now, they're just too scattered to get clear on.

My goal today is just to see what's here, rather than make decisions. I know you'll probably want to encourage me to take action, but if you could hold off on that until next time I'd be grateful.

Would you be willing to be in charge of kids' clothing? I know there's a lot of stuff here that the kids have outgrown, and I'd like to go ahead and give it away. If you could pull out anything that's stained or torn, we can throw that away and bring the rest to the homeless shelter.

I know I've kept way too many old paints, brushes, and frames. I'd love it if you could play devil's advocate and challenge me when I lean toward keeping a lot of this stuff.

Aside from helping me shift a heavy box or two, I don't actually need you to do much. I just wanted your company to make the process more cheerful.

7. Come prepared, especially if you are working in a place other than your home. A basic declutter toolkit might include trash bags, boxes, packing tape, scissors, markers, paper on which to write lists or reminders, and a couple of bottles of drinking water. A digital camera is also a great help, allowing you to photograph items you might want to sell or need someone else's permission/feedback on.

8. Build in a little celebration or reward at the end. Take your witness for coffee, a drink or a meal when you finish. Go to the beach to watch the sunset once you drop off the items you decided to donate. Call a third party who will understand what you've accomplished.
If you have other guidelines that might help your fellow creative declutterers and/or stories about how "the warmth of witness" helped you declutter, I'd love to share them! Just add them by clicking on "comments," below.

THE WARMTH OF WITNESS, part one

2010-08-24T15:21:00.000-07:00

The concluding evening of my DeClutter Your Creativity Class last week reminded me of how important companionship is to the decluttering process. (For those of you in the Treasure Coast of Florida, there's a one-day version of the class coming up on September 18; just visit my website's "classes and groups" page for more information).
It made me recollect an experience I had after I sold my New York apartment in 2002. I moved some but all of the possessions I'd gathered in my 25 years ther to Florida, where I began to combine them with the things I'd accumulated down here. Most of the stuff fit fine, with some judicious thinning out. But I didn't have time to pick through a stack of ten or so boxes of old letters, manuscripts, books, vintage antiques, and mementos. Instead, I rented an inexpensive storage space nearby, intending to get the sorting done in a month or two.

Of course, I missed the deadline.

By about a year.

That storage space—so nice, so neat, so convenient, so affordable—had two terrible flaws.

First, it was out of sight, and therefore, if not exactly out of mind, at least out of deadline. In the midst of my busy life there was always something more important to do than clean it out.

Second, it soon became a source of shame. It was patently absurd to pay even $35 a month, $420 a year, to store stuff I didn't quite remember, didn't ever use, and probably wouldn't even keep. As the months marched on and the rental fees mounted I felt more and more frustrated with myself. Labels like "lazy," "spendthrift," and "stupid" started coming to mind. I knew intellectually that they were unreasonable self-judgments, but on a gut level they felt true. And the more true they felt, the more paralyzed I became.

Out of desperation, I finally asked my friend Abby to come with me to the storage facility. I made it clear that I was not expecting her to do physical labor. Her role was simply to be beside me—to reassure, to see things clearly, to help me give myself permission both to clear out and also to keep the clearing process simple and gentle.

Abby was the perfect person for this process. Nurturing but not crowding or cloying me; aware that I could "do it myself": she was there in the way the training wheels on a child's first bike are there, unnecessary if the bike stays upright but crucial if not. Abby opened some boxes and made a few trips out to the car that day, but the most important way she helped me was simply to stand still. To be there. To bear witness.

And to my shock, our work took less than two hours.

It was not really hard to do, it turned out. It was just hard to do alone.

When we bear witness for or around others, we are simply (but powerfully) present somewhere, at some time, for some thing. When others bear witness for us, they too take on the job of paying attention. As witnesses, they do not need to shape the transaction, provide advice, make choices. Their meaning is in their presence. They are richly but quietly there.

Because clutter and overwhelm are such isolating and/or shameful burdens for many of us, people we can trust to bear witness to and for us are worth their weight in gold. They can and will do far more than any organizational manual, plastic bin, storage space or to-do list to help us clear out our life's dead wood.

As you read this, does one or more names of possible witnesses come into your mind? Is there someone you would feel comfortable enough with to reveal some of your stashed-away or not-so-stashed away clutter? Is there someone whose witness could help affirm your worth, your sanity, your basic goodness as you clear away some of the things that no longer serve you?

I hope your answer is "yes." If it is, check back on this blog later this week, when I'll post a list of gentle suggestions about working with your "witness" to declutter.

If your answer is "no," there are two possible reasons. First, that you have starved yourself of relationships that see and build on your authentic self. Second, and actually more likely, that you are mired enough in self-blame to see judgments that others don't actually feel. I'll post on that soon as well.

Either way, just remember that one of the most powerful decluttering tools...is companionship.

CREATIVE COMMUNITY: the antidote to creative clutter

2010-08-12T07:30:00.000-07:00

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.

THE TIMES ON "DE-STUFFIFICATION"

2010-08-08T17:45:00.000-07:00

This article by Stephanie Rosenbloom, "But Will It Make You Happy?" appeared in the New York Times yesterday. Seems fitting that it was published in a paper housed in one of the world's great capitals of overconsumption.

Thoughtfully brought to my attention by my friend cj Madigan, the piece looks at simplification in this time of economic challenge. I appreciated the fact that it moves from a story about physical decluttering to a nuanced exploration of deeper issues, including research not just on what people buy but on how satisfying those purchases are.

I share it not because I believe that we need to toss out all our stuff, but as an invitation to continue thinking consciously and clearly about the role things--as opposed to experiences, for example--play in the creative life.

It was also heartening to see the current recession spoken of in a positive context, with a focus on some of the things it has brought the country as well as what has been lost.

SORTING SUZANNE'S STUFF

2010-08-03T12:20:00.000-07:00

Some nice comments about one of my recent poems by my friends Barbara and Peace Sanchez prompted me to glance through my file of my own poetry yesterday. (Before I go on, a thanks to Sky, Peace's sister and the mom of two of the world's most adorable little girls, for her great email as well.)

Here's a piece from February 2009, written during a period when I was intensely decluttering my arts and crafts supplies. It was really fun to write a big miscellaneous overabundant poem about overabundance and a visually shaped poem about visual art supplies, as well as to work the line lengths as they sprawl out and then constrict again. The turn toward ruefulness of the final line happpened unexpectedly, yet felt right. There's something so cathartic about making art from experiences fraught with frustration, and also about making a little fun of oneself. Might just be coincidence, but shortly after the poem was finished the studio decluttering process seemed magically to take hold. I've had absolutely no time to bead or collage of late, but all the little bits and pieces for those activities sleep peacefully awaiting their wake-up call, and fit perfectly into the limited space I was willing to devote to them. Ah, the power of the written word!

STUFF

Stuff everywhere:
no longer stuffed

anywhere, burst of bright sweets from a reft pinanta,
sparks from a Roman candle, bugs scurrying
wild in a sudden glare: paper and cord,
beads and brushes, sketchbooks
and inks,

evicted
from albums, armoires,
bags, baskets, bins, closets,
cupboards, drawers, folders, tubs, totes
(all, mind you, gorgeously labeled, color-coded, styled)

onto counters, floors, tables, sofa, bed; no surface, no plane,
no mesa for that matter, would seem wide
enough to hold this vivid
clutter; this is a
diaspora

of sorts,
minor and mostly
benign but an uprooting
nonetheless, a material nation expelled
from its longtime homelands by a (minor and mostly)

benign) despot queen beset by mental coup, creative
apoplexy, itchy feet, bottle neck, hot flash, hot
need: as antic as her own court jester,
as possessed as Ahab by
his dream;

her dream,
just as madly pure
and maybe as elusive, glimpsed on far
over the flotsam, jetsam, chop: space to make
art, not just own art supplies; time to play; room to move

and remove; the clear decks, fresh start, clean slate
that she has rarely seen.

"Stuff" poem © Suzanne Fox 2009. Please do not reproduce without permission.

CREATIVE CALM AND SOLITUDE: one woman, two visions

2010-08-02T09:47:00.000-07:00

This is the beginning of the late May Sarton's lovely book, Journal of a Solitude. A poet, memoirist and friend of many leading lights of the literary world of her day, Sarton wrote the book to reflect on the rhythm of her creative life as honestly as she could, from the irritations and sadnesses to the moments of joy when a poem is coming to life.

Begin here. It is raining. I look out on the maple, where a few leaves have turned yellow, and listen to Punch, the parrot, talking to himself and to the rain ticking gently against the windows. I am here alone for the first time in weeks, to take up my "real" life again at last. That is what is strange--that friends, even passionate love, are not my real life unless there is time alone in which to explore and to discover what is happening or has happened. Without the interruptions, nourishing and maddening, this life would become arid. Yet I taste it fully only when I am alone here and "the house and I resume old conversations.

From the moment I first read this description and others like it elsewhere in the book, I wanted the home, the writing studio, the life Sarton describes in the journal. The image of the quiet rain and solitude speak so strongly to me, as do many of the other images and events in this quiet, lyrical book. I still feel a little pang of longing as I sit here writing about it in my own home office, a lovely and colorful space currently piled with a myriad of projects and papers and reminders of people to call, write, email, or see.

I said Sarton attempted to write the book honestly, but as always happens in memoir or autobiography there are omissions both intentional and unconscious. Biographies of the writer reveal a turbulent life filled with turbulent and dramatic relationships. In fact, the Library Journal review of Margot Peters' biography of Sarton comments, "Peters chronicles a life full of turbulence, pain, loneliness, neediness, and passion...and offers a well-written, compelling literary biography to which readers will respond with emotions ranging from empathy, sympathy, awe, and admiration to disgust and disbelief that an artist who produced works that provided inspiration for so many lived with much misery and dissatisfaction."

Does the unattractive reality of Sarton's life as depicted by her biographers render her own more pleasing vision of it null and void? I don't think so. But it does remind us, maybe, that there is no perfect creative life or creative practice or creative studio. For each moment of peace there is a moment of tension, conflict, or uncertainty. For each day in which our space is decluttered and deeply nurturing, there is another day when it is messy and distracting.

And you know, I think that there is something that's inspiring, if paradoxically so, in that knowledge. It tells us that we all have the same access to creative concentration, and the same lack of access. Let's not wait for that perfect afternoon full of solitude and raindrops before we start to create, that perfectly decluttered house with the roses on the mantel and the hours of time alone before we quiet our minds, focus, and reflect. Let's all accept the variable rhythm of human life, its swings from resonant beauty to simple human messiness. Most of all, let's learn to find our creativity and concentration wherever we are.

DON'T BLOG IN THE MORNING (and other rules for creatives with cluttered craniums*)

2010-07-29T07:09:00.000-07:00

So here's a typical "day in the life."

I got up bright and early thanks to beloved foster-dog Henry, who whuffs and huffs loudly in my ear when he's ready to start the day. I sat down at the computer promptly after our walk. I checked email, as I always do.

And that's where it all started to go wrong.

I get blog posts from my friend and collaborator cj Madigan by email. In my email in-box was a new post from her, mentioning our monthly book-browsing forys in a piece about handmade books. This got me thinking about how nice it would be not to be "just" a writer but a writer who layers visuals with words. This got me thinking about Nick Bantock, and Gordon MacKenzie, and Barbara Hodgson, among others, all of whom I wanted to link to and all of whose work led me to others of their ilk...and so it went. (I'm not going to redo the links here, but you can see the fruits of all this unintended labor at my Working Writer Wonders blog.)

By the time I finished the post, with all its links, I was a good hour and ten minutes behind schedule.

Leading me to decide that except on the days when blogging is part of my actual schedule, I had better not do it in the morning, before the stuff that is actually on the schedule gets done.

It strikes me that for each of us there are things that are so innately absorbing that they automatically detour us from whatever it is we're really trying to focus on. Blogging is one of these for me. So is stopping at a thrift store or flea market. So is deciding to organize my fridge or my laundry room or my desk drawers. Email is one of these for some people, but not for me; it sometimes takes time, but I don't love it enough to go for a giant wallow. Facebook, too, is a temptation for some. I've consciously chosen not to join until later this summer, so I wouldn't know.

What are your detours, things you start without truly meaning to and then get swallowed up in?

*craniums? crania?

A POST IN MY PARALLEL UNIVERSE

2010-07-28T18:00:00.000-07:00

Some days my three blogs—one on writing, one on loss and legacy, and this one on creative decluttering—seem as different as chalk, cheese, and chianti; at other times, a single post could appear on all three. Today's post on my GriefGlow blog, inspired by writing by ecologist and writer Susan J. Tweit, is about caregiving and clutter. Consider yourself invited to take a look at it if this sometimes terrible twosome is part of your experience.

SIMPLIFICATION FOR STUFF-LOVERS

2010-07-27T13:19:00.000-07:00

The Zen Habits blog by Leo Babauta is one of the more successful blogs there is, currently visited by over 185,000 readers and often counted among the country's top one hundred blogs. It collects all sorts of interesting perspectives on life clarity and choice. (It's not exclusively or even Zen, despite the title.) A recent browse there turned up a nice guest blog by Barrie Davenport of Live Bold and Bloom titled "How to simplify when you love your stuff." If you're a creative person with clutter on your mind or in your closets, take a moment to click here to read the piece. It's a nice perspective on the theme I spoke of in my June 4 post, "Simple is not the same as minimal," containing some interesting questions to ask yourself about your stuff and some welcome reassurance that serenity, simplicity, and an uncluttered spare room are indeed posssible even when you just can't live without your collection of 1940s pincushions (or whatever your personal possession passion happens to be).

DECLUTTER TOOLS, I: the digital camera

2010-07-25T13:08:00.000-07:00

Many of us save what I call "fossils"--objects from our pasts--because we're afraid that once they go, the memories will too.
A digital camera is an elegant way to solve this problem. You can take as many images of the object as you want. You don't have to pay to print them or make room to store them. And you can use them--repeatedly and variously, if you wish--in artwork or legacy projects such as scrapbooks, albums, collages and more.

I began taking digital photos of my parents' odds and ends in the late stages of clearing out their home. The important stuff had been given to one of us kids, a friend or a charity by then. But there was a lot of unimportant stuff left that I found hard to let go of. Shirts or shoes I remembered them wearing. Miscellaneous plates, pots or pans. Cardboard boxes with my mom's handwriting on them. Lots and lots of silly bric-a-brac.

There was no way I could keep all these things, which totalled up to many, many boxes. Yet each had its own memory. Once I realized that I could honor the memory in photographs, the releasing of the actual stuff got easier. Not easy; it never got that. But easier. And in retrospect, I find that the images feel more respectful to my folks than keeping the actual things ever did. They're not stuck away in some box I never look at. They're permanently preserved. I can browse through them whenever I want. I can email them or share them. I can write about them. In other words, the photographs can be changed or used in ways that the things themselves could not.

As I began to realize this, I started taking quick digital photos any time I was decluttering something I knew needed to go but had some emotional hold on me. Projects I had decided I wasn't going to finish, furniture that served its purpose before, clothes I'd loved but no longer fit into. The images are a kind of record of the richness of the tangible mementos of my past...preserved in a way that honors not only my past but my present.

IF THE DALAI LAMA HAS TIME TO TINKER...

2010-07-24T17:47:00.000-07:00

I recently watched a film about the Dalai Lama. (The film itself isn't terribly good, which is why I'm not linking to it here. At left is an unrelated image of him discussing the cosmos with the late Carl Sagan, courtesy of Cornell University's Chronicle Online, just because it seemed apt for this post.)

The film had lots of information about the Chinese takeover of Tibet and other dramatic issues. But what caught me most was its mention of this: the Dalai Lama reads extensively in books on physics, neurobiology, and other sciences, and likes to putter around taking things like watches and cars apart and then putting them back together.

In other words: This is a monk who spends several hours a day in spiritual practice. Who makes himself available to questioners, not always of any particular rank or importance, from around the world. Who consults and speaks and travels constantly. Who is a leading international advocate for peace. Who authors many books. Who leads the Tibetan people in exile. Among, I'm sure, many other things.

But.

He takes time from meeting government leaders and working for peace to have fun taking stuff apart, just because he enjoys it.

He takes time to read stuff that has no direct practical application to his job.

There's no evidence that he feels guilty doing these things. The images in the film display the same contentment his pictures almost always reflect. (You rarely if ever see the Dalai Lama look stressed. Indeed, an impish grin is the expression you see most often in images of him.)

Are you traveling around the planet counseling kings and presidents about peace?

I'm certainly not. When it comes to saving the planet or getting warring nations to make nice, ain't no one counting on me.

If someone as important and productive as the Dalai Lama can do it, why don't we give ourselves permission for just a little restorative guilt-free puttering now and then?

WATCHING ME, WATCHING TV

2010-07-20T08:04:00.000-07:00

As discussed in recent posts, I've been watching myself watching TV lately, trying to figure out how best to use (and not use) it in my life now. The more I did this, the clearer it became that the volume of TV I watch isn't truly the problem. Yes, I've been turning the tube on too much, and with too little conscious choice about what I was doing. But it feels as though its the unconsciousness, the lack of intention, the sloppiness you might call it, that's the real culprit in making my use of TV counterproductive, rather than the number of hours I watch or don't.

With that in mind, I've begun to create a new set of guidelines for myself. Here are the first four; a few more to come some day soon.

1. Get, and stay, out of masochistic judgmental minimal mode. As I mentioned in my last post, I've realized that my view of TV tends to be very harsh and moralistic, a stance that leads me to unhelpful and unrealistic plans and produces a knee-jerk belief that less must absolutely be better. (If you've ever tried to diet by suddenly cutting out every single food you perceive as bad, you'll know what I'm talking about. It's unnecessarily punitive, and it just doesn't work.)

2. Consciously choose what to watch, and to watch that with real enjoyment. Because I so often used to "watch" TV while doing something else, even the best programs weren't truly a source of relaxation or refreshment. My new commitment is to truly watch the majority of shows I turn on (see one exception below) with the quiet and focus I would give to a movie in a movie theater. When I choose to watch a program, I'm actually turning everything else off, sitting down in one place, bringing a beverage or snack, and being really present. The change in feeling this produced was strong and immediate. I actually feel relaxed while doing it, rather than just pretending to "chill."

3. Pay attention to just how well that enjoyment works, or doesn't. Sometimes a program that sounds like it's worth real time and focus is, but sometimes it isn't. Two PBS programs I tuned into last week showed the difference. Ken Burns' Baseball documentary felt utterly absorbing to me: visually rich, historically fascinating, and emotionally moving. Masterpiece Theater's Mystery last Sunday was not. I chose it because I like both Agatha Christie and David Suchet, who plays her detective Hercule Poirot in the series. But the program, while visually stylish, didn't actually grab me on any imaginative, emotional or intellectual level. Had I not been fully focused on it, I'm not sure I would have noticed. But this time I did—and, in consequence, gladly turned off the tube and picked up a book.

4. Distinguish between my different uses of the TV. Looking more closely at my television usage, I realized that an hour or so of the TV I "watch" some days isn't really used as TV at all; it's my personal version of listening to national and international news on radio, and a reasonably good and interesting source of information at that. Rather than feeling guilty about it, I've decided to embrace it—and go right ahead with doing the dishes, sweeping the kitchen, unpacking the groceries or whatever while I listen. I guess another way to say this is that in contrast to guideline 2, some TV is perfectly fine as a multitasking tool.

ME AND MY TV: SOME INTROSPECTION

2010-07-17T09:00:00.000-07:00

I originally planned this post as a followup to my tale of television decluttering I began in my June 24 post. I expected I would have to do little more than announce a decision and a plan. But that's not the way it's turned out. Instead, I'm coming up with many more questions than answers as I look honestly at the role TV plays in my life. It may be that I'm overcomplicating the issue. But it strikes me that if I don't look deeply at things like this, I'm not paring down in any truly soulful or creative way. Instead, I'm just making obvious, knee-jerk, superficial changes. With that in mind, I've decided to let myself explore a little before making a decision.

The first thing I've done is make a list of television shows I really look forward to—programming that truly nurtures me in some way, and that I genuinely look forward to seeing. Assuming that all of these shows were running at once (which isn't usually true) they would add up to just about 26 hours of viewing a week.

I have to admit I'm really ambivalent about that number. One voice inside me says, "What? You call yourself a creative person, but you want to spend the equivalent of an entire day a week sitting in front of the tube?" Another says, "Hey. Considering that there is actually some decent stuff on TV and that you live alone, have a painful foot problem, and need a break from the books you work with all day, that's not too bad at all."

The intensity of that first, judgmental voice is a real surprise to me. There's a lot of harshness in it, and a lot of black and white thinking. From that viewpoint, all television is really, even shamefully, bad. I'm not really sure where that judgment comes from. I don't even believe it, consciously at least. Yes, some TV—even some of the TV I like—is purely and frankly junk. But some of it just as clearly isn't, and even some of the junk strikes me as perfectly fine as light entertainment. It's also interesting that I don't judge others and their TV watching with any of this mean-spirited condemnation. I know a lot of highly productive people who like TV, and it would never occur to judge them.

Another surprise is this. I've actually been watching a lot—and I do mean a lot—more than those 22 hours. Some of this extra TV time comes because I turn the set on as a kind of default pastime when I'm tired and bored. Some of it comes when I'm doing something else during this kind of TV time: filing, checking email, washing dishes, or doing some other task I find boring if done on its own. That kind of TV isn't really watching at all. It's mostly listening, as though the television is actually a radio I'm playing as background noise.

I'm not sure where any of this leaves me. With the questions I mentioned earlier, I guess. And the need for still more musing.
How and when does television nurture me? Are there things I could be doing that would nurture me more, or ways I could use TV itself in a more deeply refreshing and energizing way?

How and when do I use television unconsciously—sloppily, if you will? What triggers me to turn on "American Justice" or "Designed to Sell" in the background? What would it be like, doing the dishes to silence, or even to music? Is there something I'm not liking in the quiet, or something I'm drawn to in the background noise?

I'm not yet sure of the answers. I am sure, though, that the issue here isn't actually TV per se, but rather how I relax and refresh myself—or fail to.

THE CLUTTER OF DECLUTTERING

2010-07-15T09:00:00.000-07:00

My post of June 24 wrote about my decision to downgrade my cabletelevision service to the most minimal lineup of broadcast channels. A commendable plan, if I do say so myself. The reality of actually doing it, however, was hugely frustrating. I won't bore you with the details of my television saga. Suffice it to say that it involved two appointments set up but missed by Comcast, four conversations with phone representatives quoting wildly different terms and prices, a visit from an installer who had yet another version of the service lineup, and a final phone chat with a supervisor named Anna who dealt very patiently with my by-now deeply irritated self. In the end, it turned out that very little of the information on which I'd based my original decision was accurate, most notably the cost savings promised. (As it turns out, 12 channels cost exactly seven bucks less than 89.) I'm currently rethinking my options; it may be that my life and focus are better served leaving the TV as is and changing the way I use—or abuse—it instead. I'll post about that this weekend, once I have my mind made up and my plan (re)clarified.

In the meantime, two takeaways I can share from this experience. Nothing earth-shattering here, just some reminders that may be helpful as you, like me, move toward greater clarity and focus in your life.

First, that decluttering can take more time and energy that we expect. Getting the TV turned off, withdrawing from a committee that sucks time and energy from your life, getting friends used to the fact that you don't pick up the phone during your writing hours, rolling investments over from disparate accounts into a single one, finding someone reliable to whom you can delegate something: in the short run, paring down actually involves spending extra time and effort, especially when anyone else is involved in the process. I know that in theory, but forgot it totally this time around, ending up rushed and stressed after those conversations with Comcast ate up a huge chunk of my Saturday.

And second, that it's okay to change your mind. I always struggle with this one...and did so even more than usual on the television issue since I'd already posted on this blog about it. My first reaction was to worry that changing my mind and keeping the TV as is would make me seem indecisive, or uncommitted to my creative life, or shallow, or (insert your criticism of choice here—I came up with a juicy bunch of them). I know deep inside how unlikely it is that anyone will make these kinds of judgments, yet just posting this update occasioned some anxiety. Yet if this experience was someone else's, I'd support their right to adjust their plans without question.

As this reminds me, the most damaging kind of clutter isn't "out there," but in our own minds and hearts.

PROPER USE AND APPRECIATION

2010-07-13T10:36:00.000-07:00

I recently came across a quotation that really spoke to me. Writer Ruth Beebe Hill wrote: "I own my own life. And only mine. And so I shall appreciate my person. And so I shall make proper use of myself."

The words are so bracing just reading them made me feel like I had just jumped full-tilt into a still, cold lake.

Here's my truth. I don't consistently "appreciate my person," at least not if that means giving my person the things, like decent sleep and good food and time to daydream, that a worthy person surely deserves.

I don't always, or even mostly, make "proper use of myself." I'm infinitely better at it than I used to be, but I still do an awful lot of things out of fear or knee-jerk reaction or just distraction.

How about you?

Do you appreciate your person?

Do you make proper use of her—or at least try consciously to do so?

JENNIFER HOFMANN ON THE HABIT OF BUSY-NESS

2010-07-11T15:20:00.000-07:00

Jennifer Hofmann's Inspired Home Office blog speaks not just to those of us who work at home but also all of us "decluttering creatives." Her latest post on the addiction of busy-ness explores that issue beautifully, and the small "to do" tasks at its end are both easy and powerful. I receive her email newsletter and find it to be full of helpful ideas, yet also brief enough to enjoy in the middle of, yes, a busy week. Highly recommended browsing for all of you who, like me, are trying to create sacred, restful and/or creative time in your life!

MOMA IN A MINUTE

2010-06-29T19:06:00.000-07:00

This little video lets you look at every one of the paintings that were on view in New York's Museum of Modern Art on April 10, 2010. In one minute. To piano (Philip Glass's Mad Rush, in case you wonder.) It's not as good as wandering through MOMA some spring evening, perusing art with one eye and people with the other. And it's not going to declutter our lives. But it is a reminder that delight can come in small packages. And that lots of creative inspirations can be warehoused right on our computers...nary a bulky art book in sight.

GOODBYE, O GIANT TIME-GOBBLING GADGETRY

2010-06-24T06:00:00.000-07:00

I just made a decision that feels both good and a little anxiety-producing.

I ditched my cable TV service except for the handful of basic channels—channels that with the exception of PBS, I rarely watch anyway. I kept those just to have some connection with the world of mainstream news in case of some historic event I would want to follow. But short of that, they're not very tempting.

I haven't been watching much TV lately. But to my surprise, canceling it still feels strange and even scary. That seems so weird, doesn't it?—feeling anxious about shutting off what is at best an intermittently entertaining pastime, and at worst a depressing and destructive waste of time. But embarrassing as it might be, that is what I feel.

The huge array of channels I was getting with even my minimal prior service, one step up from basic, were my "go to" * when I felt exhausted, irritated, or too distracted to do something deliberate. They were sort of like the friends I made during junior high, that profoundly soul-shattering nadir of my popularity, coolness, and confidence. I befriended everyone who was willing to befriend me (and lest that sounds cruel, let me add that I'm pretty sure they were willing our of the same desperate I felt.) We all knew that it was better to sit beside someone in the lunchroom than to sit at an empty table. This kind of friend isn't popular, isn't even reliably interesting, has nothing in common with you, and doesn't really like you any more than you really like them. But they are THERE.

So it is with the crazy array of channels on extended cable. Mostly not very satisfying...but always, always THERE.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out in both my life in general, and my writing in particular.

But meanwhile, who wants to invite me over tonight to watch "Top Chef"?

INTRODUCING THE TELEPHONE'S HUMBLE SERVANTS

2010-06-22T20:15:00.000-07:00

In his book The Art of Time, Jean-Louis Servan-Schriber (gee, do you think he's French?) tells the story of Lucien Guitry (another Frenchman, an actor this time) who reacted to that brand-new invention, the telephone, with the words: "Someone rings you, and like a servant you respond?"

Indeed.

Today, we tend to see our telephones (land, cell, smart, and other) as our servants. As tools we use, rather than masters we serve.

But Guitry's perspective seems just as accurate, if not more so. We all know people who seem at the phone's beck and call more or less constantly, even when the call doesn't seem very urgent or very important. (We may even be those "people" ourselves. But I won't tell if you won't.)

Ongoing multi-device accessibility is one of the many forms of clutter we mostly take for granted.

You don't need to change that if you're comfortable wherever you are. But it's worth asking: what would your creative life be like if you took three hours a day...one day a week...one weekend a month and made it entirely phone free except in cases of truly dire emergency? Free from outgoing calls, that is, as well as incoming ones? What would the silence of that telephone hiatus do, once the initial anxiety was over?

If you already have some practice like this, with your phone or other communications devices, I'd love to know how, when, how often and what it does for you. So comments to this or any other post are, as always, welcome. (Especially, of course, because they don't require answering a phone.)

MIRÓ'S STUDIO: maximum stuff, minimal distraction

2010-06-19T09:44:00.000-07:00

Here's a little reminder that decluttering your creativity is not the same as having an empty studio or writing room. As I always say, it's not about the stuff...it's about whether the stuff supports you or constricts you, opens you up or shuts you in.

The stuff in the studio of late Catalan artist Joan Miró definitely did the former. Even though there was definitely a lot of it.

I've given you a link to a photograph of his studio coupled with a lovely little memoir from Robin Lough about filming Miró: Theatre of Dreams. (Sadly the film, which looks wonderful, is affordably available for purchase only in Britain.) Lough and the crew got a rare gift: the opportunity to actually film Miro, then 84, at work there.

I was inspired to look it up by a gift from my friend Donna Morris: a little book called Miró’s Studio, written by the artist's grandson Jean Teodoro Punyet with photographs by Jean-Marie de Moral. Donna has a wonderful eye for art, artifacts, and books, and is also a thoughtful and dedicated declutterer. It's no surprise that the book is delightful and much to the point. Here's what it has to say about the artist and his stuff:

Miro was particularly attracted to old and battered objects that had been abandoned as "of no further use." When walking on the beach or in the hills he would indulge this attraction...In 1978 he explained that 'my present absorption in all these bits and pieces, all these treasures, is quite new. I've been hypnotized. When I go for a walk I don't hunt for objects as if I were looking for mushrooms. There's a sudden force, bang! It's a magnetic force that makes me look down at a certain moment.' His studio gradually filled up with shells, roots, empty cans, bones, pumpkins, pine cones, almonds, snail shells and bat's skeletons, among other things—and not forgetting his collection of traditional and folk art.

And about the artist's studio in Palma, Majorca, created when Miro was sixty-three:

For the artist the space had religious significance. It was a place for meditation, solitude and creation. The only sounds were his breathing and the creaking of his rocking chair when he sat down to think. Miro concentrated very intensely when he was working, lying in wait for the slightest incident, the spark that would lead him towards new perspectives.

So how does a creative person get from a motley collection of empty cans and bat skeletons to the regular and joyous production of art? I suspect the key is in that word "concentration." Though perhaps beginning with the inspiration of an object, Miro was able to move past it into a deeper, more expansive interior space. He might have begun with "stuff," but he didn't end there.

You might say that he was able to declutter his imagination, whenever and wherever he wanted to.

THE STILL AND SOULFUL CENTER

2010-06-19T09:43:00.000-07:00

In my recent STUFF AND SCHEDULES post I wrote that decluttering our stuff doesn’t do much good for our creativity unless we also declutter our schedules.

I recently found an image that captures (at least for me) the difference between the feeling of a cluttered schedule, and the feeling of a purposeful one.

It comes from the late Henri Nouwen, a priest, professor, and wonderful writer. Nouwen's work spoke (among many other things) of the wounded healer, the person who can lead and nurture others precisely because he or she is human and flawed.

About time and our use of it, he wrote "being busy is like being on the outside of the wheel—you go up and down and around all the time. If you are centered, you are in the hub of the wheel. It takes much less energy.”

Like so many Americans, I find myself on the outside of the wheel quite a bit. Lots of movement; sometimes, but definitely not always, lots of impact; and lots of tiredness in the aftermath.

Once every day or even just once a week, stop to ask yourself if you’ve just bit whirling frantically at the rim of the wheel, or quiet—yet still moving forward at exactly the same speed—at the hub.

OF STUFF AND SCHEDULES

2010-06-18T17:54:00.000-07:00

Decluttering our stuff doesn’t do much good for our creativity unless we also declutter our schedule.

To put the same thing a different way, it doesn’t matter if we have space for our creativity if we don’t have time for it as well.

Time and schedule clutter are my own personal demons. Though I own a lot of various kinds of stuff, my home feels spacious and orderly. But if your a "pack rat," don't envy me. It’s my schedule that’s always a mess. I naturally pile stuff on in that department. Obligations to others and expectations of myself…a double edged sword that cuts creative work right out of my life.

So here's an interesting question: do you hoard stuff, or stuff your schedule?

NO PARTICULAR REASON: just a lovely image

2010-06-12T23:42:00.000-07:00

BLOWIN' IN THE WIND: shifts in the studio

2010-06-07T19:26:00.000-07:00

Sabrina Ward Harrison's collage-based books always delight me. They're rich, unexpected, personal, moving, and yes, as one book title says, messy. The combination makes for lovely and corrective browsing when my left-brain precision threatens to cut off my creativity at the root.

In the Foreward to Messy Thrilling Life, Laurie Wagner, who worked with Harrison on the book's text, describes the way a big wind that blew past the tall studio wall onto which they had tacked and ordered the writings, sending it into what she calls a "swooshy-wooshy mess" on the floor.

"You make your plans and then a great wind comes along," she writes. "And so Sabrina did the only thing one can do, in life and in the studio. She picked up the pages and began again...We didn't remember which piece came first. We hadn't numbered the pages. We started over. Got more coffee, put music on....and in a day she'd created a different book entirely. And I tell you this story, want to show you the swooshy-wooshy mess on the floor, because it reminds me of how life really is," she concludes.

Indeed. The studio's never going to be perfect. Neither is the art/writing/music/whatever we make there. Order and discipline, structure and plans are necessary. But so is the wind that blows through our studios and our minds, making us re-order, re-create, and renew.

At the moment, Harrison's web site is showing a panorama view of what looks like her studio and assorted other personal spaces. Fun viewing, even if you're new to her work.

THE ESSENTIAL ART OF SAYING NO

2010-06-05T18:09:00.000-07:00

Leo Babuta of Zen Habits is always interesting on the subject of focus and simplification. I recently came across a post he wrote for Freelance Switch on the "Eight Essential Strategies to Saying No." Though he's focused on freelancers, his thoughts seem on point for all of us creatives as well, whether or not we officially work a freelance life.
My own discomfort at saying "no" was a continuing source of clutter in my life for a very long time. Social clutter, time clutter, project clutter...so much of the overwork and burnout I've created over the years has come from a combination of my good intentions and my inability to refuse.

If this is a challenge for you, as it is for me, clieck through to the post for his list of essential strategies. It's detailed enough to be helpful and personal enough to feel authentic.

Even beyond the details, it strikes me as helpful to remember the simple truth that saying no to what doesn't truly serve you is (a) perfectly okay, and (b) an acquired skill--or even, perhaps, an art. It doesn't become second nature overnight. But with a little work, it can become easier and more comfortable.

As with any art, it just takes practice.

ABUNDANCE AND INTENTIONALITY: a lesson from the garden

2010-06-05T17:27:00.000-07:00

When I lived in Manhattan, I walked the ten blocks or so to Central Park's Conservatory Garden frequently during the spring and summer. When you live in a single 13 by 18 foot room, you need all the outdoor spaces you can get. I used the Garden as a kind of extended living room, a place where I could read, or think, or even snooze.

My favorite part of the space is the South Garden, a circle of English-style perennial beds ringed with lilac bushes. As the summer wore on the perennial garden grew more and more colorful and rich, its beds crowded with what seemed like hundreds of varieties of blue, purple, and yellow flowers, each of course with its own particular color and texture of foliage. At summer's height there was barely an inch of soil to be seen from the paths, just a crazy gorgeous profusion that seemed at once utterly random and completely right.

Think about the densest and most complicated garden you've visited.

Did it seemed "cluttered"?

I'd bet the answer is no.

Profusion is not the enemy. Abundance is not the problem.

The South Garden is abundant in an intentional and balanced way. The flower beds are densely packed, but the paths still leave room for movement.

Don't worry about how much stuff you have. Think about how intentional it is: how much it reflects or doesn't reflect your wisest choices for your creativity and your life. Think about how balanced it is: how well the profusion that inspires and nurtures you is balanced with clear space to move, dream, and create.

A lesson from the garden: we can't become "decluttered creatives" just by weeding stuff out.

SIMPLE: IT'S NOT THE SAME AS MINIMAL

2010-06-04T15:22:00.000-07:00

When you think about clearing out or decluttering, don't confuse function and style.

Clear, unclogged, functional, open, simple to use, and easy to maintain describe the experience you have in, and with, a space. Minimal, empty, modern, Shaker, and Zen just describe its look.

Your creative space can feel everything named in that first group of word without looking like any of the words in the second.

My friend Dolores' Manhattan apartment was a case in point. Her apartment was small, her interests were many, she taught piano lessons at home, and she had already lived six decades of rich, varied life by the time I met her. It's not surprising that she had a lot of things, and that they were packed fairly densely in the restricted space. Yet Dolores' apartment wasn't problematically cluttered. Things were in their place no matter when I dropped in. The cupboards and closets she opened were orderly, the pathways clear, the furnishings old but well maintained. Her piano lessons were given and enjoyed in comfort. Dolores struggled with a whole lot of life challenges in the years we both lived in Manhattan, but feeling hampered or confined by her stuff wasn't one of them.

Don't shame or blame yourself your house or studio doesn't look like a Zen monastery or a home from a lifestyle magazine. Accept your own personal style, taste, and preferences without judgment. 'Test' your spaces based on how free and comfortable you feel within them, not on how they look.

IF BEETHOVEN COULD DO IT...

2010-06-03T17:41:00.000-07:00

Those who have taken my "DeClutter Your Creativity" classes have heard me say all too often that it's not about the stuff. If you can truly create freely surrounded by piles of this and stacks of that, there's nothing broke that you need to fix.

And some very creative people can do just that.

Here's a glimpse of Beethoven's working space, as described by a contemporary of his named the Baron de Tremont.

Picture to yourself the darkest, most disorderly place imaginable...blotches of moisture condensing on the ceiling; an oldish grand piano, on which the dust disputed the place with various pieces of engraved and manuscript music; under the piano (I do not exaggerate) an unemptied chamber pot; beside it a small walnut table accustomed to frequent overturning of the secretary placed upon it; a quantity of pens encrusted with ink...then more music. The chairs, mostly cane-seated, were covered with plates bearing the remains of last night's supper...

I felt quite comforted by this the first time I read it; despite the piles of manuscripts on my writing room floor and the empty soda can on my desk, I suddenly seemed like a paragon of order and cleanliness.

The larger point is this.

Beethoven's working quarters were clearly a big, fat, grungy, malodorous mess.

But his oeuvre was abundant, his music sublime.

The true test of a creative space is the work that is made there, not how it looks.

BETWEEN PAST AND FUTURE, II: The question of distance

2010-06-02T15:23:00.000-07:00

Once you've done the tagging task described in my earlier post, Between Past and Future/I, you might want to try this one as well. It works in the same room uses the same tags you put in place earlier.

This time, you're not focused on the question of past vs. future. Instead, you'll be looking at how far away in past or future each item is. Is the room or studio filled with things that representing meaning very far from today, or are most of its contents relatively closely linked to how you live, work and/or create today?

To explore this, go around the room and take off the tags on every item that represents a past six months or less before today or a future six months or less after today. In other words, you are removing the post-it tags from all items that definitely have been or will be used within six months of today. The word "definitely" is important here. Don't fudge.

The binder holding a manuscript you began and abandoned two years ago, books from college or graduate school, shells from a long-ago vacation, a stack of empty frames you've kept in case they might fit artworks as yet unpainted, a box of pastels you don't really like to use but spent good money for way back when, and ephemera you might use for collages of a type you're not making now would all fit into that category. Leave their post-its on.

Books you've referred to within the past couple of months, manuscripts of recent work, supplies for media you're currently working with, mementos received very recently, and stuff that is placed in some "way station" in the room but will soon be moving out...take the tags off all of these.

As you did after the first exercise, take a moment to step back once you've finished.

How have the numbers of post-its changed? A little, or a lot? If the room looks much the same, you probably tend to assign memories or usefulness to things for a very long time. If there are noticeably fewer sticky notes in view, you're likely a person who lets go of such meanings faster.

Has one color disappeared more than the other? My own personal tendency is to keep many more things I received in the the distant past than things I might need in the distant future. In contrast, my friend Denise is much more prone to keeping art supplies and materials that she might use someday. Neither tendency is better or worse than the other; it's just helpful to know which one leads to the most clutter for you.

Though I'm focusing on creative space here, this exercise is helping in things like closets too, helping give you an easy visual read on just how much you are hostaging the present against the distant past or future.

BETWEEN PAST AND FUTURE, I: How much room does the present have?

2010-06-01T15:32:00.000-07:00

Here's an interesting way to explore the whys and wherefores of a room or creative space that feels uncomfortably cluttered.

You'll need nothing more than two different-colored post-it pads of the super-sticky variety....a half-hour or so of uninterrupted time....

Choose one of your two post-it colors to represent things you are saving because they had meaning in the past (yesterday, or any day before that). These might be mementos, collectibles, finished artworks, or supplies for projects you are no longer working on.

The other color then represents things you are keeping in case you might need or want them in the future (tomorrow, or any day after that).

Move around the room or studio as quickly as possible, tagging each item you pass with either one or both colors.

Stop yourself when you notice that you are assigning judgments, feeling shame, trying to make decisions, or starting to move items around. None of those reactions are necessary right now; tell yourself you can always think about/do them later if you wish to. Just place as many post-its as you possibly can, as quickly as you possibly can.

When you've tagged most of the items in the room, step back and look around you, trying to keep an open heart and an open mind.

Does one color predominate over the other? That is, do you seem more prone to keeping mementos from the past, or hedges against the future?

How much room does the present seem to have?

Leave the notes in place and take a brief break. Give yourself some time to 'live with' whatever you've discovered.

MY FATHER'S BOOKS: a recollection

2010-01-05T09:00:00.000-08:00

As part of the book clearing out I spoke of in my last blog post I reluctantly shed some of my late father's books. My dad, Saul Fox, was an avid reader. Indeed, most of the time he put my own more scattered reading habits to shame. Progressive in politics, idealistic in philosophy and eclectic in interests, he regularly took on monumental tomes, reading what seemed like a scant handful of pages on any given day yet finishing even the most demanding volume both quickly and thoughtfully.

He did not like to discard books—as he often admitted, he had a Depression mentality about such things. And so, when he died, his bookshelves held evidence of the reading of many decades. Some of the books I remember from my earliest childhood: To Kill a Mockingbird, Profiles in Courage, not one but two copies of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, a book which I have attempted to read but never made it through.

From a few years later he owned A Thousand Days, The Death of a President, and a variety of other books on the Kennedys, though these were the exception to his usual save-it-forever rule; when John Kennedy's sexual exploits and role in Vietnam became public, Dad would have let those go had it not been for Mom's intercession. The Watergate years added a copy of Woodward and Bernstein's All the President's Men, as well as a variety of the gardening books he bought as he struggled with his first suburban yard (he was an apartment-house child) and built his own small greenhouse.

And so it went, each decade marked with its own thoughtful collection of titles. I'm sorry now that I did not make note of exactly what he was reading when he died in 2006 at the age of 81; that information would be interesting to me today, but it escaped me in the welter of emotions and tasks that follow a parent's death. I do remember that several books on the Iraq war were stacked on his "reading table" at that time, along with Haynes Johnson's The Age of Anxiety: From McCarthyism to Terrorism. I'm pleased to say that unlike The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, I did make it through Johnson's book, the intelligence and searching, almost searing approach of which seem entirely consistent with Dad's preferences and personality.

Dad's books are a deeply personal, deeply soulful part of his legacy, and it wasn't easy to release any of them. But a realistic assessment of space requirements in my home prevailed, shored up in moments of deepest doubt the image of my brother correctly asserting that he did not need physical possessions to remember Dad and Mom. I let go of some twenty books, keeping those titles that seemed most characteristic of his interests and values. It occurs to me, as I write this, that an even more soulful tribute to Dad than keeping his beloved books would be to read as frequently, passionately and persistently as he did...an inspiration from him that may not be a physical legacy, but is somehow an even more meaningful one.