editing

Not just the writing kind.

I know I've loused up this whole "Daily Slice" business. I promise I came into it with the best of intentions but, as usual, my emotional state threw me off. The tears and sleepless nights evoked from my mistake at work should have been the perfect fodder for creative writing. The wonderful people in my life who kept me sane through it are all worthy of their own biographical essays detailing the ways in which they are absolutely indispensable to me. (Side note: everything is fine, my boss said this wasn't even the biggest problem of her week.) But anyway, instead of writing I went out for drinks, watched too much YouTube, went thrift shopping and basically busied myself with every distraction imaginable which brings me back to the original point of this blog: editing.

It's been on my mind a lot lately as my life continues to drift away from any recognizable form it's ever been in and into something entirely new (after my breakup, two moves, and a health scare among other things). I do not feel like I am who I used to be. And that is actually a very scary concept. Because who am I now without those things that I used to let define me? A big, fat I dunno was definitely the first thing that popped into my head. And after that I've just sort of been pointing at various things in my life going, "I need to fix that and I need to fix that and I need to fix that" ad nauseam. As it turns out, that doesn't really get me anywhere except to put into high relief all the areas of my life that make me feel like a failure. So what to do about it?

Well, I recently gave my bookcase a makeover. (I promise this has a point.) A decorating blog somewhere told me that my bookcase should only be about half way full and should focus on a few things that are meaningful to me instead of housing every single book I currently own all in one place. At first I was like What? Isn't that a bookcase is for? That's why I got the big one; to hold the millions of books I insist on lugging around. But I  apparently I don't know everything about everything in this world and so I decided to give it a go. Plus if I hated it, I could put everything back like it was before and leave the rest of the world none the wiser.

It was not as easy as I thought it was going to be. I loved almost all of my books or at least I could find a reason to want to hang on to each of them. I was going nowhere fast as my "discard" pile was about four books total and I was even a little shaky about getting rid of those. Clearly this method wasn't working. So I decided to switch directions. Which of these things did I want to keep? I picked a certain amount of space on one shelf, I chose a general feeling or idea that I wanted to convey, and then I went back to my pile and said, okay, which of these things does that for me? A few books here, a memento there and before I knew it, my bookcase was practically glowing with all the love and joy that was emanating from the objects and the arrangements I had chosen. Then I looked back at the bed.

It still had a ton of books on it. Like sixty books, maybe. I didn't realize I had ended up with that many. But what did they make me feel? Pretty much nothing. It was just a heap of paper. I mean books are great, but none of the ones in that pile filled me with the same joy as the ones I specifically pulled out and loving mixed together with my favorite possessions. So what's the deal with that?

Well, it kind of gave me an interesting look into my own psyche.  I was just trying to elevate my style but without meaning to, I created a shrine of the things in my life that are most important to me: pictures of family, books that shaped me, a pack of tarot cards, a bowl my grandfather made me. Basically a road map of the things that I should be paying attention to and that are worthy of my time.

Trying to remove those things from my life that don't make me feel like the powerful, informed, courageous, compassionate, giving person that I am striving to become was not working. Clearly. I've still been watching YouTube until the wee hours or going shopping for the third time that week all the while thinking man, I really shouldn't be doing this right now, I should get rid of this from my life. And then I don't. So it's time to flip that thought around on it's head. The real question is, what do I want to be doing right now? What will take me down the path that leads to the way of life that I want to be living? And hey, if I couldn't answer that question before, now I've got a handy dandy bookcase with all my life's joys displayed to jog my memory whenever I need it. Thanks, random decorating blog- you've changed my life a little bit today.