We’d decided to take our first tandem bike ride of the season and I was digging around for my riding shorts, a t-shirt and socks when it hit me that I had too much crammed in the drawers. A minute later, I had the contents of the drawers all dumped out on the bed, making piles of what I did want to keep and other piles of stuff that needed to go.
For months (maybe years?) Linda has tried to get me to throw out well-seasoned articles from my wardrobe. I said they had character. She said they were ratty.
Although she couldn’t understand the nostalgic value of a t-shirt I played tennis in through high school, she’d shake her head and fold it away for me. But why was I keeping so many pairs of “Sunday undies” (you know, they’re holey)? And did it matter if most of my socks were mostly like new if they were all threadbare in exactly the same spot?
I wasn’t sure what was causing the wave of desire to clean the drawers out, but I did it anyway. Linda wasn’t even around. When she came in to see if I was still going to ride, she found me going through every piece. If there was any question, I gave her final approval over its merit to stay.
For the last couple of years, I’ve been putting an extraordinary amount of attention into business development. Very little of my time and resources have been invested in my heart and art.
It’s been a couple of years since I led the last of several groups of artists through Julia Cameron’s book, The Artist’s Way. In her book, Cameron talks about the need to clean out and de-clutter as a way to make room for the new and unexpected to come into our lives. In the last couple of weeks, I’ve experienced a shift in my heart and mind. Rather than list out quantifiable business goals as a part of my group accountability, I found myself interjecting some creative project goals. I hadn’t really given it much pre-thought. It just popped out. It was as if my heart said, “Enough. I want my turn.” Who was I to argue?
Although I’d started ruminating on what I wanted to do and how I wanted to proceed, I hadn’t yet taken any defining action. But as I was putting my socks and skivvies away, I realized my heart wanted to see some change, some cleaning out to make room for something new. This isn’t the end, but I had to start somewhere. So I have.
Fortunately, we still had time left for our ride.
Charles