Simplify
A few weeks ago, I saw a blog post on Magical Musings that asked what each person’s theme or power word would be for the new year. At the time, I said my power word for this year would be “WHATEVER.” Actually, that’s my word every year. Oh, and its less in-your-face variant, “Umm, okay.” But it recently occurred to me that my theme for 2007 is “Simplify.”
It all started in November with the epic housecleaning I posted about back then. Over the last decade or so, we’ve accumulated far more books and roleplaying game supplies than we need, and since our house is back on the market as commercial real estate, I decided to sell, donate, and/or throw away any stuff we aren’t going to take with us to the new place. Then the circle widened to include helping my sister move into her new house and, in the process, get rid of tons of her stuff.
Before I knew it, the idea of housecleaning had pervaded every aspect of my life, and it finally dawned on me that my goal for this year is to simplify. In order to clean up the directories on my site, I had to temporarily remove the blog. I’ve reinstalled WordPress, but I may not restore all the entries. The SQL is backed up, of course, so I can put things back if I feel like it. But for now, things are much, much simpler. I like it this way!
I also decided to simplify my writing life. Every time I find myself hating writing, it never turns out to be the writing itself, but is instead the drama inevitably (or so it seems) attached to peripheral activities. The answer to being fed up with flame wars, petty disputes, and ego fests? You got it. Simplify.
This site will most likely evolve into more of a personal blog, with posts about a little bit of everything. These days, I’m finding myself less inclined to write about writing, but I may occasionally make some writing-related entries.
Posted: January 10th, 2007 under Miscellaneous.
Comments: 9
Comments
Comment from Edie
Time: January 10, 2007, 8:21 pm
Lynne, I actually have 2 words now: Lucky 2007!
I hate even the thought of moving, although we’ll probably do it in 5 years. Good luck on all your simplifying–and your house selling. It gives me the shudders to think about it.
Comment from Alice Audrey
Time: January 10, 2007, 10:38 pm
The I Ching calls that ‘peeling’. Everybody’s got to do it now and then.
Alice
Comment from World
Time: January 11, 2007, 6:12 am
I’ve got more than a little of that to look forward to myself. I thought moving from an apartment to a house would at least have the side effect of absorbing lots of my stuff. Ha. Houses only do that when you don’t expect them to.
But there are few things more pleasant than an uncluttered house, so off we go.
Alice: As much as I like the I Ching’s metaphor, I think ‘excavating’ is more to the point in my case. ;)
Comment from James
Time: January 11, 2007, 6:13 am
OK, that’s funny. ‘World’ is me.
Stupid browsers and their habit of caching form entries…
Comment from Lynne
Time: January 11, 2007, 6:51 am
Hi, Edie! Yeah, the idea of moving makes us pretty nervous, too. But all this cleaning and getting rid of stuff gives us a feeling of doing SOMETHING to prepare.
It’s probably an illusion, though. :-)
Comment from Lynne
Time: January 11, 2007, 6:52 am
Hi, Alice! Yep, there’s a lot of that going on. :-)
Comment from Lynne
Time: January 11, 2007, 6:54 am
I wondered who ‘World’ was!
Yeah, the word for what we’re doing would definitely come close to ‘excavating!’
So moving into a house didn’t solve all your clutter problems?
Comment from James
Time: January 12, 2007, 2:52 pm
It certainly didn’t, and I never even fully unpacked from the apartment…
Of course, part of the problem is that mom didn’t completely move out, either, so I inherited a fair amount of her/our clutter in the attic, including a bunch of the boxes from our move to Iowa 16 years ago.
Whee.
Comment from Lynne
Time: January 13, 2007, 12:57 pm
For the items that have no sentimental value, I recommend eBay. :-)
Since the beginning of November, I’ve sold 475 items (some of which included multiple books) on eBay. Unless things change drastically in the next couple of weeks, I’ll hit Power Seller status by the end of January.
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