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.
Showing posts with label shame. Show all posts
Showing posts with label shame. Show all posts
Thursday, January 13, 2011
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
THE WARMTH OF WITNESS, part one
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.
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.
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