A low thrill level

This week I was reading how a successful entrepreneur said she accomplished so much because she is a list keeper. 

That set me to thinking how I was once a diligent list maker and I was 99% more efficient in those days.  I had a constant little spiral notebook that, if temporarily misplaced, I joked I’d lost my brain. {No kidding because it contained a wealth of ongoing information.}

Today I ask myself : When my life went into crisis 4 or so years ago, why did I forsake my little book and my near-daily list making?

I honestly don’t know the answer to this because it makes so much sense to me. With the onslaught of my state of grief and my deer-the-headlights era, I would probably have fared much better had I kept up list-keeping.  Granted, I did have periods of improved efficiency when I did make lists – like before trips, and when family was coming for Christmas. There were some {probably desperate} futile attempts with index cards, Google lists on the side of my email and “sticky notes” that float on my computer screen. But I reverted back to a state of personal chaos.  I realize nothing works for me in the same way as a little book.

Today I’m vowing to keep up methods from what seems like a distant past.  I have a new companion notebook.  Once I had a quirky little routine that I'll try again {kind of like how individuals might have their own way of stacking a dishwasher.} A new page each day  ~  a column for phone calls  ~ a corner for emails  ~ a To Do list. If there’s something I don’t get done, it goes to the next page for the next day. On the opposite page I keep notes and phone numbers and ideas for menus or grocery lists or gifts.  This worked for me once, I hope it works again.

To tell you the truth, I’m excited at the prospect of being even slightly more efficient.  I think it could mean more time to be creative :)

Decluttering

Today I wanted to send my mom "something" in the mail to let her know I was thinking of her. I decided to use a postcard I came across from when I was in Concord, MA around 2006. The post card was of Walden Pond.  I wanted to briefly tell my mom on the card about Henry David Thoreau so I googled his most famous writing.  I have never been so enthralled by it as I was today. It hit a new spot for me because of the stage of life I'm in where I crave simplification; a decluttering, if you will.  Reading this I readily admit that I have so much clutter of possessions, time, demands (from my house mainly) that in my current state and stage, I'm unable "to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life".

I suddenly envy my daughter who lives in a tiny 2-room house on a farm in South Africa, who went over with a back pack and a suitcase for a couple of years.  Granted she has more now than will fit in those pieces.  She has resolved not to become too weighty with possessions because ultimately she thinks she will return to the States and cannot bring much back. I also think of my sister who passed away untimely of cancer and who taught me valuable lessons about earthly possessions that you cannot take with you.  This means my whittling down of possessions must be done judiciously. The advice of my friend, Kathleen, was to ask myself: "Do I love this?  Do I need this?"  If not, then I must consider parting with it.  I'm reconciling with this more and more as I look at the next stage of my life as a new act of my play.  Also in Kathleen's words, "You need to be lighter, more nimble going forward!"  Good advice.

Here is Thoreau's wisdom:

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion."

You can read about Henry David Thoreau here on Wikipedia.

These are all photos I took at Walden Pond in August, 2006