Letting go of fossilized dreams
I’m continuing to redesign my business and sort through things I no longer need to make space for new pieces of the business in my home office. Lots of attempting to tame the clutter, literally and figuratively. I’ve continued to paint everyday, and the more I am loving it, the more I am wanting more space for it and all the associated supplies.
Walking with the change is taking an army of support. As part of this process, I have intentionally reached out into new networks for fresh ideas and approaches. I’ve had a long term obsession with organizing devices (thinking if I just find the right ones, I will be saved from all the stuff) combined with a healthy fear of professional organizers. So I’m dipping my toe in the water, talking with some of them on twitter, asking questions, taking their suggestions and courses.
Where do I look when I think?
One very helpful blog I discovered is Jennifer Hoffman’s Inspired Home Office. When you sign up for her very helpful newsletter, you get an e-book Putting the Fun in Functional. In it she explains how becoming conscious of where we look when we think can make a big impact on our workspace. Following her instructions, I discovered I tended to put fresh flowers in this place, but I had an open closet behind it. Simply closing the closet door, and making sure I always have fresh flowers to put there, has made a big difference in how I feel in the office.
The Clutter Monster
I’m slowly beginning to admit I cannot have or do everything I want and lead a healthy balanced lifestyle. Something has to give, and I have to make some choices. I discovered e-courses with Lisa Baldwin at Divine Order, who helps with sorting out the connection between how I clutter my mind, and how it is reflected in the spaces around me. I may have to take these courses forever, it sinks in slowly. She has a new course The Gentle Art of Clutter Clearing starting May 25th, which I will be taking.
Not only has Lisa given me direction and guidance in how to approach the physical stuff, she has been particularly wonderful in helping me though the places where I feel stuck and overwhelmed by it all. Making changes in my space and big changes in my business at the same time, really stirs up all my resistance and stuck places. There are days where I feel like I am bouncing off walls trying to find a clear path.
Assessing whether things are beautiful, useful or loved
Organizers often suggest assessing whether a particular object is beautiful, useful or loved to decide to keep it or let it go. This keeps tripping me up. With household items, its pretty clear. But that’s not my most challenging area. The hardest places for me are in my businesses of past and present. I was lying on the couch with my cats in the room that holds many of my art supplies. Suddenly I felt like I was in a tomb surrounded by the fossilized dreams of businesses of the past.
There are the boxes of threads from when I made big underwater soft sculpture installations, the fabric and dyes from when I made clothing where size 14 was marked size small, the beads from when I worked alongside my friend Cheryl teaching beadwork, the boxes of slides of work from decades of craft show applications. Remnants from dreams long past. A series of reminders of the myriad of ways I have walked with being an artist in a world that only marginally supports artists.
So much of this stuff is beautiful, useful, and loved by me. At the same it holds the energy of struggle, and painful letting go as I have walked through a long series of entrepreneurial attempts at finding a way to make a living doing what I love. It also holds the energy of hope that sometime I might have learned enough or the timing will be right, and I can return to make it work. Do I need to let this stuff go? To move it out to release the energy for new things? It feels really hard and painful to consider, but I wonder if it is like all the artwork I let go from my first marriage. It was beautiful, but it reminded me of times that were not, and carried the energy of something that no longer was supportive to me.
Is there something else to consider?
I’m running into a parallel challenge in my business. I have a lot of product in inventory. Luckily, it doesn’t go bad. I do find it paralyzes my thinking at times. Its hard to let go of focusing on trying to sell it, even when the market is suggesting other paths. And it too holds the energy of a particular dream, one that I have poured years of effort into. It is very painful to think about walking away, yet to fully release my creative energy, I think I have to be willing to.
Another person I am working with is Hiro Boga, The Fourishing Muse. She wrote a blog post about seeing my challenge as being at the tideline. In her post, Flourishing at the Tideline, she suggests I consider:
If you’re struggling to put your work out there and have it be seen and valued, here are some questions to ask yourself: What are the fluid elements, in your work and in your business? What has power and depth, like the sea, but lacks shape and form?
Then, ask your customers and clients. What keeps them up at night? What do they need?
Finally, ask your business: Where does your fluid, creative heart meet the shore of your clients’ needs?
Take some time to sit with the shape of this boundary. To feel it intuitively. Then map it out. Craft your offer to fit that shape.
I believe this is starting to happen. At least in some ways. But the shape is still amorphous and seeking form, and many days I feel like I am being tossed and rolled in the surf rather than gently being formed. Painting helps. It gives me a place to give these energies and shapes form. But I wonder if there are other things that would help? Any ideas or suggestions, or things you have heard about?
18 Responses to “Letting go of fossilized dreams”
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The projects that you used to do, can you keep a “happy” souvenir piece from each era or a photo record of those times, and give away the materials you no longer use/need? (If you took it up again using the same as before, you might feel like you are “going back” to that; instead you would probably want to revise your approach and use a different selection of materials or colors or whatever — to make it new and reflective of where you are now.) Let someone else take them up and create the next step in their journey — while you are now free to pursue the next step in your journey? Especially if being reminded holds regret or other negative twinges for you — let it go! Start where you are!
Seth GOdin’s Ignore Sunk Costs post just popped through my inbox. It’s sorta kinda related. (wry grin)
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/05/ignore-sunk-costs.html
Oh dear woman… I really, really heart this post so very much. Thank you for your sharing, your vulnerability, your honesty & your sharing of the process.
These words in particular struck home with me ~ I am in such a similar place:
“I’m slowly beginning to admit I cannot have or do everything I want and lead a healthy balanced lifestyle. Something has to give, and I have to make some choices.”
And funny too ~ I have the same art-ifacts of past endeavours throughout my home… and I’m thinking now… do I need to keep holding onto them?
Only those things that serve, support and nourish me now deserve to be in my space. I’m always on a journey moving forward, I don’t need to keep my past with me.
*big big hugs*
Hi Christine,
Good to see this and thanks for the links to the home office info, as I now have one and I do need a clutter solution. Keep us posted.
Betsy
Christine, I made a decision a long time ago to have, in my life, only that which supports me in being fully myself and which is in harmony with my whole being.
This meant that there was a period of time during which I let go of a lot: not just things, but also relationships, a house, a car, friendships, a job, a whole way of life. It didn’t happen all at once–we aren’t built to handle massive change simultaneously on many fronts–but it happened consistently, intentionally, until the foundational cleansing and healing was done.
I feel, as a kind of prickly, jangling unease in my body, anything that isn’t in alignment in my life. So I keep things flowing. Each month, I review what I own and give away what I no longer need. In my daily meditations, I look at ways in which I use my time, my energy, my heart and my work, and check to see if my choices take me closer to what I truly want my life to be, or further away. If the latter, I release them, with love and gratitude, as gently as I can.
It helps to get back to first principles–to ask yourself how you want to be, in the world. What makes you truly happy. And then to choose those things and people and places that support that state of being. Often, your head will want something that your heart does not. If you choose your heart’s longing, your head will follow eventually. If you allow your head to make your choices for you, you may find yourself unhappy, overburdened and feeling unsupported. Head is good at implementing heart’s true desires–not so good at identifying what makes you feel whole and happy.
Hope this helps, as you sort through your inner and outer stuff, and make room for your heart’s longing.
Much love to you,
Hiro
Thank you for this honest & touching post. I relate to it on many levels, having so many art supplies that I’ll “one day” get back to using, so many finished pieces that sit in storage.
Another way to frame the beautiful/useful/loved question is this:
“If it were gone tomorrow, how would I feel?”
I learned that from a professional organizer and find it helps me connect to whether things really matter to me. Though, (curses!) I see usefulness in almost every thing.
And to Hiro: Wow. You are such an inspiration!
@Barbara, I think you are on to something, especially considering I have gone out and purchased a number of things I am pretty sure I have buried in boxes since I have been painting on paper again. The idea of sunk cost from how expensive the supplies once were certainly feel like they complicate things– but I guess not really.
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@Goddess Leonie Just love this “Only those things that serve, support and nourish me now deserve to be in my space. I’m always on a journey moving forward, I don’t need to keep my past with me.” Esp as my past gets longer, the shear volumes can get frightening. Glad you are learning it decades earlier than me!
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@Betsy Do let me know if you discover any brilliance about the home office. Sometimes those new eyes can have deep insight.
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@Hiro, So much wisdom, as always. What most stands out in this moment is we aren’t built to handle massive changes at once. Probably why every time I try things get difficult?
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@Tzaddi I have worked in digital media for many years mostly because I hate the accumulation of the finished work. What do you do with it all? So it sits in storage because it is so hard to through away. I’m going to experiment with the would I miss it question. Think it might depend on my mood that day?
These words jumped out at me, as the did for Goddess Leonie: “I’m slowly beginning to admit I cannot have or do everything I want and lead a healthy balanced lifestyle. Something has to give, and I have to make some choices.”
It’s painful to admit that we’re constrained by the finite (space, time, energy) when we WANT so much! It just doesn’t seem fair. Over the past couple of years I’ve been almost brutal in culling unnecessary things from my life at every level…physical stuff, unhelpful attitudes, commitments. Letting go of some of it was heartbreaking–NOT easy at all. But the relief I got in return was worth it, truly. I hope you’ll experience that, too, when you get through some of your choice-making.
In terms of practical suggestions, Barbara beat me to it right up there in comment #1!
)
The only other thing that comes to mind is a nifty suggestion I read somewhere about a guy who e-Bayed and otherwise sold off a bunch of stuff he didn’t use or need anymore, and *specifically* designated the money he made as a replacement fund in case he ever had to buy any of the same stuff over again. In the meantime, that money earned a little bit of interest.
I took Lisa’s last course–she’s great! Good luck and…have fun?…with that. ;o)
Oh, I could relate to so much of this, Christine!! And like you it takes a long time for this organizing stuff to sink in. Slowly but surely though, it’s getting there.
This is fascinating. Sometimes “the stuff” all around us feels like a secure nest or a foundation and gives us a sense of “the known” we can cling to which is tempting when we face the “unknown” or “undefined”, but other times it feels like a drag weight, smothering, holding us back from trying new things or finding new paths or just plain branching out or … breathing.
To rephrase a little, you don’t have to get rid of it all RIGHT NOW or even get rid of ALL of it — that’s a bit dualistic. And “getting rid” is such a harsh and ugly sounding expression.
What if you decided on a certain something that could be found a new home, either by sale or donation or special gift. Then help it find a new place in the world where someone will enjoy it and love it and use it.
That sounds kinder, gentler and a lot more fun, no?
@Michelle So hard to not do everything, life is luscious with so many possibilities. Clearly I am over limit, so the risk of heartache is seeming manageable in the face of continued overwhelm. Now I need to just watch for making the letting go process any more overwhelming than the fossils. Delicate balance for sure.
@Leah Be sure to share what you learn!
@Barbara
I think the stuff can feel like all of that at the same time, and that’s what I find overwhelming. Its like an emotional seesaw, so it can be easier to just stuff it back in a box.
Your reframe is helpful. I think I’m still in the shock of new realization, so things feel black and white, jarring and violent. I do enjoy gifting things to other people who can use them, so that is a great path. I just have to back away from the ledge a bit first! Keep reminding me of the fun and generous possibilities here!
Wow, Christine. Two really big points that hit home for me.
I’ve been struggling with clutter for years, but I never realized before how much of my stuff amounts to “fossilized dreams”.
That and the struggle to come to terms with my inability to do and have it all. So much good stuff out there…I’m trying to do it all, try it all. In total agreement with Michelle that it doesn’t seem fair.
Thank you for sharing this!
@Victoria
I’m thinking there is a lot in the linkage between wanting to do it all and wanting to keep the dreams that generate a lot of the overwhelm I feel on a daily basis. I just can’t seem to work hard enough or run fast enough, which I know is the ticket to burn out. At least awareness is the first step?
So we need to talk about this too. I am on this kind of journey except that it is about shedding tasks and organizations. I want more time to do what I want to do although I resonated with that part about not being able to do everything that is interesting. Curiosity has often been my downfall! And excitement about a new idea, a new opportunity but you need to shed something to include a new something. So…I have just resigned from a board. I shed a workshop last year that I had been doing for 10 years–enough already. Two down and more to go. Thanks for the resources. I’m not bad at throwing things away or downsizing and you’ve helped me do that now and then (however, I had to buy some more mugs but that was fun). My challenge is my closet, as you well know, and it sure is time to clean that out. I keep a Goodwill bag close at hand.
Love the new jewelry and the colors you picked to go with my new jacket (what was that about the closet?) are perfect.
I just love that painting, I need it on my office wall – its so uplifting!!!
What Emma said! Is there someplace we can buy your paintings? Or prints of them? I’d love to have one of yours on the wall in front of my desk, for creative inspiration.
@Emma and @HIro Thanks for the encouragement. Guess I better get with it and find out what it takes to be an artist in the internet age?