Spring Cleaning and Walking Carefully

I’ve had a professional organizer working with me over the last few weeks, coming in once or twice a week to get through my office space with me and make a more workable and beautiful work area.

It’s been more than cool; Jamie has enlightened me a lot on the steps of creating clear, functional spaces. I’ve cleaned and decluttered before (usually in a spring cleaning frenzy or mad-dash effort before Mom visits), but I never put much thought into what happens after the cleanup. I can’t believe I ever thought I could avoid re-messing up my areas considering the minimal attention I’d given to structure over the last ten years. Sometimes structure has felt confining to me in the past; apparently the random boxes of papers and materials that would accumulate all around the office felt less confining than some kind of lovely system in which one can, umm, find things.

But here we are. With a budding little system coming together and a greater confidence in my ability to keep it together than I’ve ever had in the past. I am thinking a lot about clearing space and what it means. I’ve read all the Karen Kingston books about space clearing and a dozen more about feng shui and chi, but somehow it has be to felt to be appreciated. All this energy moving around up here. . . my mind is clearer, my tasks more straightforward, my stuff with places to go.

Martha Beck says our spaces reflect our feelings about parts of our lives. That if you ask yourself what areas of your house are a mess, you might get insights into what parts of your life need some reflection and sorting out too. It’s been good work, doing the foundation for the business side of this art. It’s making me feel like any opportunity could come my way and I can handle it. It’s a cool, empowering feeling.
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I’m in a weird position with a production company I work with sometimes. We’ve had a long relationship (that’s been mutually beneficial) and a conflict has come up between our interests. I’ve been invited to do a show that would be amazing for me , but may cause significant hassle on the production company’s side. They’re friends. We’re professionally valuable to each other. And yet, we are in a bind here that seems to be about stubbornness and self-interest (but is also about philosophy and progress) that is not easily detangled.

My default is to yield to the friendship. I believe that remembering that love is the reason for most everything helps most of the time. But I’m feeling pulled another way on this one. I think there are sometimes occasions arise in our lives that ask us to grow in other ways. To grow more strength of purpose. To grow more flexibility. To grow a backbone. To grow less afraid of having someone mad at you.

It’s frustrating, trying to make everybody happy all the time, and it never works.
I so want to come to a mutually psyched place on this. I hope we can.

Please share if you have insights on this. Thanks.

5 things I’m Thankful For Today:
1. A hard, great workout with Patrice
2. A gorgeous pear/brie/bleu cheese soup at lunch (Lordy! sounds weird but was fantastic!)
3. Ebay and the vintage Easter stuff I found there that reminds me of my Grandma
4. The chi flowing in my office! Wahoo!
5. A wealth of ideas streaming in on the kids music project