Backstory: This could be anything. A “thing”, a memento that no longer holds any sentiment, trash, something I’ve outgrown. Or it could be an attitude or a bad habit or a dream that no longer calls to me. Hmmmm….
What Happened: Tuesday morning, as I sorted through items in my to do folder, I came across the instructions for our “new” CD player (see “Nudged: Listen to two old CDs” from, well, a while ago). I had already figured out how to run the thing just by poking around, but it’s always a good idea to read up on all the functions. Except I couldn’t do that. Why? Because the instructions brochure I had saved to read was all in Spanish. Brilliant. Quick toss that one!
What else in this office/this house/this brain is taking up space, nagging me to do? What really needs to get done, what really matters? Or better yet, what do I want to do that is being put off or blocked because I’m so busy dealing with unnecessary stuff?
The next couple of days I thought about this intermittently as I faced down a huge deadline on a client job. I was exhausted, mentally, physically, and spiritually, and I started think about the feelings and judgments I might throw away: feeling stuck, feeling underappreciated, feeling stressed, feeling tired of working so hard for what often feels like so little return. I delivered the job Thursday afternoon (ahead of the deadline, thank you very much) and allowed myself a brief respite to recover. (Ha. What I wanted to do was crawl into bed with a bottle of wine and cry, but I had things to do.) Friday morning I got back to work on the next set of deliverables.
Friday afternoon, during a break and after I received a “thank you, but we’re going in a different direction” rejection letter on a project that I really really wanted, I started looking around again at what I could get rid of. Let me see, what is “dead” around here? There’s the houseplant I’d tried to resuscitate by placing it in a sunny spot on our front steps (hello, death blocking the entry to our home!)…into the trash. The table center bouquet that had been so beautiful a week ago but now smelled like rot…buh-bye. This morning I pulled out several long-dead lavender plants and planted their healthy replacements..hello, beautiful!
Ah-Hahs: Will this make a difference? We’ll see. But it felt good to throw out the dead and make room for the new, both inside me and in the world around me.