400 Things: The Great Slog

For the past six years I have kept a storage unit full of ten years worth of stuff. Honestly, I don't fault myself for keeping the unit or taking so long to deal with it. I did need the time and distance from it. Also, it just seemed an impossible task. Where was I to take it all? 

Avoiding the challenge of dealing with the memories piled up in that little room hasn't been cheap and, more recently, the urge to just get rid of it all has become an obsession. I cannot move on in my happy lifestyle re-design with all this stuff dragging me into stagnation. 

I wished that my problem could be solved as it often is on a reality show where long tasks are presented in fast-forward. Two days of work can flash by in two minutes. Instead, it has been nearly ten months since I began to deal with the storage situation in earnest.

I started off with this mess. The bed was my biggest roadblock. I had to move it every time I tried to get into the unit and nearly killed myself each time. Thankfully, a good friend bought it. Now I was dealing with . . .

this situation, which was still a lot of stuff, a lot more than I felt capable of dealing with. Still, I finally wanted to be free of it more than any benefit I got by ignoring it. And the cost of the unit was killing me. It was significantly over $200.00 per month! I had no choice but to tackle it. This time, however, I did get help from a friend. It was a amazing experience. The two of us were able to get all of this stuff into . . . 

this space in just four hours. And I wasn't even sore afterward. I was in the middle of a juice feast, too, yet never felt too tired to continue.

It felt really good to see the old space empty. It gave me hope of a time when I would no longer have a storage space at all. Of course, the new (much cheaper) "in-between" unit now looked like . . .

This! Still, I felt as though I had achieved something truly significant, not the least of which was saving about $70.00 per month. I made that move in October of 2013.  It took until February of 2014 for me to have the cash to implement the next part of my plan.

Truly I wish that I could just load everything into a truck and take it to a dumpster but I can't. There are too many sensitive documents in that awful heap: I have to go through each and every box, at least glance at each and every document and then decide where everything goes: Shred, Trash, Donate, or Keep.







To keep the "keep" pile manageable, I decided to rent a much smaller unit into which I would place the things I chose to keep. I figured I could afford it since I had already paid for the larger unit and believed I would done sorting everything by the end of February.

This is the Keep Unit. The photograph does not do justice to how much smaller it is than the in-between unit. I saw immediately that I was in for a really tough battle keeping myself to just four hundred things. I might be at four hundred right there.

I got to sorting like a frenzied demon. Based on my pace and the size of the unit, I felt confident that I could finish in eight days total.

Every day I pulled out the boxes I had sorted through the day before in order to get to the un-sorted boxes.

My life took over the hallway. Thankfully, none of my neighbors came to access their units. That would have been a . . . challenge.

The friend who helped me to load in the good back in October is 6'5" tall.  He and his long arms stacked boxes and bags above his head. I am 5'1"at best. So a good friend of mine loaned me this nifty ladder (thank you Elaine and Dave!!!). I got to work bringing boxes down from on high.

I thought the point just behind
the black file storage units was half way.
That's actually half of half way. See the big brown
box on the floor behind the black storage units? Look
for it in the next picture . .  . 

Remember how I said that I figured it would take me eight days? Apparently my memory had significantly faded in the four months between October and February. I got to what I thought was the half way point, moved a bag at the top of the stack and discovered, to my horror, that I had actually only gotten through 1/4th of the unit!

That point behind the big brown box on the floor?
That is half way.

I am realistic enough to know when it is time to re-calibrate. Of course I had chosen the shortest month of the year in which to attempt my goal (and a non-leap year at that). So I have paid for another month with the in-between unit and I will be returning the small keep unit until I am done with this ginormous task. On the upside, my biceps are looking pretty good. 

Doing Nothing

It is I 

I have a confession to make. I've been avoiding my blog, circling it as though it were a dangerous wild animal, looking at it sideways, pacing before it. I had a fabulous experience that I could have been blogging about. I finished a 30 day Bikram Yoga Challenge. That's pretty amazing! I started on December second and finished just in time for New Year's Eve on the thirty-first. It felt so good to end the year with another major accomplishment under my belt. Why, then, wasn't I blogging about it?

I'm thinking as I write and I'm realizing that perhaps I was actually rebelling against the driven over-achiever's culturally embedded imperative to always be producing. Without planning it, without acknowledging it, even, I took a break.

In the middle of the Bikram Challenge I started thinking about the next challenge. I needed to have something in place so that I didn't fall into idleness and wreck my goals for lack of planning. I had ideas. A jump rope challenge, a plank challenge, trying out a new style of yoga. It turns out that when I finished the Bikram Challenge, I was finished. I felt no motivation to jump into the next thing.

It has been nearly a month since I have done much of anything. Only now do I realize just how much I needed the down-time. I feel so much more creative and effective. I'm brimming with ideas for my classes (the new semester starts next week) and I have a couple of articles in the works. Yes, I know. Of course. Duh. Everybody knows this. Knowing is only a tenth of the battle.

This break was not my choice, really. I was scheduled to teach a class over the winter session at the institution I serve. The class was cancelled and I found out (due to my own distracted state) too late to line up another gig. I spent a few days panicking and then decided that I was not going to wind up wandering the streets. I had resources; I would use them. And then, uneasily, fretfully, I allowed myself to rest.

Although I have pretty much stayed on course food wise (no dairy or gluten but more carbs and fewer vegetables than I really should do), I've only worked out once since I finished the Bikram Challenge. I planned to make a bunch of videos and even set up my studio. I recorded myself singing one song, took a couple of pictures (see above and below) and that was it. I spent the rest of the time on marathon Hulu sessions and Facebook. I enjoyed being snowed in during the Great Polar Vortex of 0'14. Occasionally I left the house. Last week I started busking again. I'm going to need the money to cover what my savings don't cover until I get my first paycheck sometime in mid February.

Really resting is still new to me, believe it or not. United States culture has a prejudice against resting anyway (the local word for it is "lazy") but at least the tradition of a taking a vacation (inhumanely short though it might be) does exist. Thing is, my family, being from overseas, never caught on to that tradition.  My parents were both students and then both working. We never took an actual family vacation and I never learned how to truly give myself a break. Generally speaking, I work pretty much non-stop.

That ends this year - with one caveat. Next time I will be better prepared so that I can take a month off without worrying about my bills. I will be deliberate about it. I plan to have no plans. Doing nothing is highly underrated. Try it if you can.

Happy Lifestyle Purge: The Prequal

(Be sure to scroll down to my video at the end)

I spent the first three weeks of August visiting with my family in California. That visit was the first in a long time when I can remember actually, truly, genuinely relaxing. During the first week I woke up every morning and took a leisurely stroll down the stairs to find my parents in the kitchen preparing a scrumptious, nutritious, meat free, gluten free and dairy free breakfast.

Dad makes his famous nutty blueberry muffins

After breakfast, we took a nap.  Then we woke up and mom prepared a sumptuous lunch bursting with flavor, color, and nutrition.

Tofu in fresh tomato sauce with sauteed green beans, steamed black rice with lentils and a sweet squash mash

Creamed pumpkin and asparagus with black rice and lentils and soy mutton

My sister had her husband gave their two daughters puppies for their birthdays.  I had the profound pleasure of babysitting them. They usually came over after lunch. I did consider dognapping them.

Caramel and Bambi

I also got to visit with friends whom I had not seen in about twenty years. Amazingly, we seemed to pick up right where we had left off.

Early on Monday morning of the second week my dad woke me up to join him for a hike. This is a tradition between us; we always go hiking together when we are in California. We went hiking several times that week and I lost another five pounds. Here is a video I made of us hiking a couple of years ago. Altitude is an issue (I live at sea level and our California hometown is 1,160 feet above sea level). Also, I'm in much better shape now.

With nothing to do but sleep, eat nutritious food, drink plenty of water, exercise, visit with friends and pet puppies, I truly rested for the first time in ages.  

Now I had the mental space to spend lots of time thinking about how I wanted to organize the next steps of my Intentional Happiness Lifestyle design process. Paring down to 400 things is my most immediate and truly daunting goal. For months I have been mulling over how to begin.

I have a large storage room full of stuff to get rid of. That task hangs like a millstone around my neck. Happily, I found help and inspiration. I have become obsessed with Alejandra Costello's home organizing videos. Here is my favorite. It has revolutionized the way I organize my clothes. I shouldn't admit this but I watch this video whenever I feel stressed out or overwhelmed. Alejandra has this cheerful and calming manner about her that helps me relax.

I had been watching Alejandra's videos for a couple of months and all the tips I had picked up from her over that time suddenly came together; I knew what I needed to do! While I couldn't complete the storage job right away, I could take care of my room.

Oh, my room. My deep and shameful secret. Nothing felt more depressing than coming home each day to that disaster. I literally had to clear a path from my bed to the closet and on my bed I kept a space clear for me to sleep on. Otherwise I was totally surrounded by a mess. I would watch the television show Hoarders just to scare myself, imagining a pathetic future in which I would make the news after the firefighters had to dig me out.

It isn't a hoarding problem as much as it is a messy problem. My breakthrough came when I realized that the main issue was my desk and a storage bench I had placed in front of it. I had intended to use the bench as a seat that doubled as storage. Unfortunately, it was too low so actually sitting at the desk was truly uncomfortable. Additionally, the desk had no drawers and since I couldn't reach it very well (because the bench was in the way), I tended to just throw stuff on top if it. And so it piled up.

It is a pile up no more. Watch this video to see the improvement. I'm not quit finished. In a video about organizing closets Alejandra mentions how she switched from hanging her jeans to putting them in drawers and demonstrates how much more room that gave her (tons). So I still have to get drawers and those under the bed containers for the vacuum bags I store my off-season clothes in.  Still, there is much progress and I am very happy. Enjoy!

What Makes You Itch?

Whenever I feel that, perhaps, I am the adopted spawn of Don Quixote and Sisyphus with this Happy Lifestyle Design stuff, I watch this video. A Facebook friend shared it with me. Someone named Angelina Smith posted it. It is my meditation.

Sometimes I forget that when I was pushed off the cliff five years ago, I discovered that I could fly! So, when I worry about how my rent for August will arrive or whether I'll ever be able to see a dentist about this tooth that is bothering me or whether I'll ever pay off these darned school loans, or whether I'll ever get this van or birth the sustainable farm/service retreat/entrepreneur incubator I am dreaming of, this little video helps me to remember what I already know to be true: It will come.  It always does.

The British philosopher, Alan Watts reminds us to ask the earth-shattering question, "How would you really enjoy spending your life?" Get that? How would you enjoy spending your life? You have permission to do that! We are taught the opposite. We are taught that one does not have permission to do what one enjoys but, rather, that one must do what is necessary to be successful (code for "materially wealthy"), no matter whether getting to "success" sucks the very joy from one's existence. Alan Watts calls this stupid. What a relief to hear this and to know it to be true. How would you really enjoy spending your life? Dream a little. Keep on dreaming. Dream bigger. Take that first step . . . and then the leap. It will come. It always does.

What Is This Blog For?

Poster from my Facebook Feed.  If you know who originated it,
please let me know so I can give them credit.

An attention-grabbing link came through my Facebook Newsfeed the other day. The link was to a New York Times article by Thomas L. Friedman titled, "Need a Job? Invent It." In the article Friedman says, "My generation had it easy. We got to "find" a job. But, more than ever, our kids will have to "invent" a job. (Fortunately, in today's world, that's easier and cheaper than ever before.)" You can read the article here. I added the emphasis.

This article is the truth!  I'm also excited about it being out there because it has affirmed that, indeed, I am not crazy. I am dumping my expected life to create a life I never imagined I could live. It it turns out that that is exactly what I'm supposed to be doing. That is the future.

I'm not ahead of the curve, either. Timothy Ferriss, author of The 4-Hour Work Week, got there before a lot of us did.  He introduced the idea of life-style design to me. Before *that*, however, there were the hippies. They are, to me, the true pioneers of intentional happiness lifestyle design. (So, now I'm asking myself, am I a hippie? I see a blog post about hippies in the near future.)

I was raised with the conventional admonishment: Go to school, work hard, get a job, work hard, retire, have fun. Most of us were. My parents lived it for most of their lives. And then, one day, our neighbor from across the street had a chat with my dad. Her husband had recently passed away.  He had been a doctor. He had worked very hard for all of his life.  Just when he was about to reach part three (retire) he suffered a debilitating stroke. He never got to see part four.

Our neighbor told my dad about how disappointing this was and warned him not to wind up the same way. My dad is a smart man and my mother is brilliant. The moment my parents found that running their pediatric practice negatively impacted their health, they were out of there.  Currently they reside on a farm in South Africa.

My parents immigrated from South Africa to the United States with three children in tow. They came, initially, so that my father could go to school. The plan was for him to complete a Masters in Public Health then return to South Africa to teach health classes for our church.

One of my earliest memories of my mother is waking up to the sound of her typing a paper for my father. It must have been less than a month after we had arrived. I had been asleep on the floor in the living room and the slow "clack, clack, clack" of the typewriter invaded my dreams. It must have been about four a.m.

We arrived in Loma Linda, California, in December, about eight days before Christmas.  To save money on heat, my parents shut the doors to the bedrooms and we all slept on the floor in the living room. I think the carpet was a green shag at the time. Our house had been damaged during a flood in the sixties so the floor in the living room sloped downward enough to make rolling on it fun for my sister and brother and me.

Our house did not have central heating. Instead, an in-floor furnace placed at the junction between the living room and dining room provided warmth.  In the evenings we could sit around the furnace toasting our feet and drinking Soyagen as we read our books. That early morning, however, my mother sat at the dining room table a few feet away from where we slept, methodically pecking away, typing that paper one letter at a time. She had never been taught to type. White out was in full effect.

When my father discovered that he was actually taking pre-med courses in order to complete his MPH, he expanded his horizons and went to medical school. He simultaneous enrolled my mother in nursing school (she says he "threw" her in) and I spent the rest of my childhood watching my parents study and work their behinds off. I followed in their footsteps.

I got my first job when I was eleven. I cleaned my piano teacher's house in exchange for piano lessons and some cash. Her house was quite small and she wouldn't let me clean the bathroom. Basically I swept and scrubbed the kitchen and dining room floors, dusted the living room and vacuumed the house.  And then we would have our lesson. I never felt prouder and more accomplished, knowing that I was doing something so grown up.

I cleaned house for my next piano teacher, too. By the time I finished high school, I had two  housekeeping jobs plus a (very) part time after school office job. I was well on my way to the American dream.

Working hard, loving school (and having great parents and teachers and classmates) got me into Princeton for undergrad and then into Columbia Law School. By the time I started my law firm job, I had been working for nearly 20 years. It was starting to get old. I had also been married for about seven years and things started to get funky with that, too.

Just then, I discovered Tim Ferriss's book. It was like a revelation from the sky! I devoured the book not so much for its practical suggestions (at the time I believed they were truly impractical for most people) but for its philosophical premises: Live now! Invent yourself! Aim for happiness! The one lesson I remember best is how Tim applied the Pareto Principle, the 80/20 rule, to his life.  He said, 20 percent of your life causes 80 percent of your problems. You know what? It did! I identified that 20 percent and I was divorced almost exactly one year later.

Tim's book is called the 4-Hour Work Week because it truly intends to be a step-by-step guide to creating a lifestyle in which one works for only four hours per week. The tag line is, "Escape 9-5, live anywhere, and join the new rich." I dismissed the four-hour part as poppycock and focused on the general principles. I've changed my mind a bit about whether it is practical. It can be practical if one decides to make it practical.

I still don't ever see myself doing just four hours per week mainly because I would miss doing what I do! Perhaps it depends on how one defines work? Whatever the case, I find myself at a new stage of designing my life. And that (finally!) is what this blog is for. Exploring Intentional Happiness Lifestyle Design. The details are in the next blog post.

F*** My Life My House is Burning Down

(Scroll down to see the special link at the bottom then read this story).  Yesterday I spent a happy hour merrily blogging along. Banana bread was baking in the oven and I felt a wonderful sense of satisfaction; my writing mojo, it seemed, was coming back. I came to a place in the blog entry when a break seemed sensible and so I clicked over to Facebook to check in on what I had missed over the past 60 minutes. Because life is that eventful. I saw a status update notification, clicked on it, and found the following update from a friend:

F*** my life my house is burning down.

Now, my friend is known for his sagacity, on the one hand, and a ribald humor on the other. This status update seemed to fit neither of these characteristics. Perhaps, I thought optimistically (I'm celebrating everything, remember), perhaps he was being metaphorical. Maybe he'd had an argument with his wife. Maybe he was playing a video game and had lost.  

Two hours later, he posted a shaky camera phone video confirming that, indeed, his house, along with some of his neighbors' homes, did in fact burn down. The video is titled, "Bye Bye to my House and Everything I Own". I'm supposed to be celebrating everything, right?

Craig and Shelley's House

My friend is homeless.  Every material possession he and his wife and three young daughters had, everything save the clothes on their backs, whatever they had in their pockets, and the car he sat in across the street from his home, watching it burn, everything is gone. The fire was covered on the news.

New York News | NYC Breaking News

In all, five homes burned down. Forty-five people were left homeless and pretty well destitute.

I have found it unhelpful to say to suffering people, "I know what you're going through", mainly because that isn't true. It also isn't helpful to say, right away, that material things are nothing, just be thankful you are safe. It can be a while before one who loses everything forgets what he or she lost. More accurately, one doesn't really know what one has lost except that they know that they have lost everything. The unknown consequences of that loss - that is the scary part. And one cannot just un-scare another person. It is a process.

I do know something about losing everything. I have a very different relationship to things now than I did five years ago. Oh, there wasn't a fire but I told myself to believe that there was. There might as well have been. When I left my ex-husband, I literally left with the contents of two suitcases.  At least I had that.

I remember laughing at myself that first afternoon in my new apartment.  I had flown on the red-eye to JFK from California, taken a cab straight from the airport to the rental office, picked up my keys and moved in. I felt scuzzy and wanted to take a shower. No curtain.  I felt hungry and wanted to cook dinner. No pots. Not even a fork. I went running to the store when I encountered no toilet paper.

I was completely overwhelmed by everything that had happened over the prior 18 months.  I felt utterly helpless. I had no wits left. That was the point.  I was meant to learn this: When you don't know what to do, do nothing.  Just ask, trust and celebrate. The universe (yes, I said that) reciprocates and fixes things. And so I let go and I trusted. Amazing things happened. Miracles happened. My community stepped in and did for me in ways I could never repay. I would never have known such mind blowing wonder but for losing everything.

I am wishing the same experience on my friend and his family. Losing everything sucks. It just does. Eventually, however, perhaps a year or two from now, they might not remember what most of those things were. But they will remember this.

This morning a friend of theirs set up a GoFundMe campaign to raise $5000.00 for the family.  Within one hour $610.00 had been donated.  I see no reason why the goal won't be met within the next 24 hours. This outpouring - now that is something to celebrate.

If you would like to donate (what an awesome rush that is) please click the link below. Even $5.00 can make a tremendous difference.  That's toothpaste. Or a couple dozen eggs, a carton of milk, all kinds of stuff. The reward to you for participating is beyond monetary measure and so is the joy you will bring to this family. Pour out the blessing! Let us give this family a reason to celebrate everything.