You would think it would be easier to clean your damned apartment than to adjust your mood. Yet this second of my 21-day salutes was way, way harder, and not just because I’m a slob.

Making the first meditation about something as obvious as focusing on the happy made the process of writing about it much more straightforward. I either had an obvious blessing conk me on the head or I was tasked with taking something—anything—and finding the good in it. Either way, a relatively easy writing process.

To write about cleaning? Harder. Much, much harder. I know that there are people who make a nice living writing about cleaning (more so, probably, than the people who actually clean), but I wasn’t interested in “just” writing about cleaning. (Although I was happy to give people a few pointers…Neil.)

This whole here blog thing is about process. Specifically, about taking the parts of my process that I can share and doing so, in the hope that some lucky soul will either enjoy the telling of it or learn from my foibles and foible not themselves. Both, if we’re lucky.

It’s my process, too, of course. But what I was doing wasn’t so easy to clarify until yesterday, on Day 20 of this maddening cleaning thing, when I was on the phone with Lily and she casually brought up how she was enjoying the blog lately because I seemed to have found a way “to externalize my process.”

Which just goes to show you: wisdom is like the perfect stiletto heel—you’ll never find it when you’re out there looking. You just have to sit back, relax and trust that eventually, when the time is right, it’ll find its way to you…

xxx
c

Photo by Esther17 via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

TOPICS: 21 day salutes, Cleaning My Damned Apartment™, truth.

After being out of town and just plain out of commission, today found me both home and feeling over my cold enough to catch up with my beloved Lily.

I made a decision awhile ago to stop multitasking during real phone conversations, since it’s not possible for me to have a quality talk with split focus. But I find I get mad spilkes when I have to sit and focus with no visual stimulus or physical activity. I’m okay if I’m hanging out with a friend and we’re ‘just’ talking, I’m okay driving a car and listening to the radio, but I cannot JUST sit and talk on the phone or JUST sit and listen to music. (Oddly, I can just sit and watch a movie or even TV, but I feel sick if I JUST watch TV. That might be JUST conditioning, though—Ole Golly and my mom felt pretty much the same way about the idiot box.)

Anyway, I’d been Getting To Empty in preparation for my trip tomorrow, but that required mental energy, which I wanted to have fully focused on Lily. I stopped as soon as I got on the phone, but sitting still was starting to make me panicky. Not good.

Then, while I was up getting a drink of water, I absentmindedly picked up a sponge and started cleaning the window screen in the kitchen. Instantly, I felt my focus return, laser-like, to our conversation. So I got out the all-purpose cleaner and wiped down the vertical blinds. And then the glass cleaner and cleaned all the slats so they could go back into the jalousie windows for fall.

And lo, an hour and a half later, not only were Lily and I massively caught up on events large and small over the past month, my whole apartment looked amazing.

Everybody wins.

Despite my highly competitive nature, that really is my favorite thing…

xxx
c

Photo by webschepper via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

TOPICS: 21 day salutes, Cleaning My Damned Apartment™, communicating, work.

Yesterday, I made it formal: I talked to my agent about saying bye-bye to acting.

Now, it’s not like this has been a banner year for me, acting-wise; it’s been my worst year since the commercial strike. I’m hitting a weird time, age-wise, and the business has changed a lot, too. Auditions were down anyway, to the point where the few people with whom I discussed my potential move wondered why I would actively take myself out of the game. Why not just go to whatever auditions were left and pursue what I wanted in my down time.

But I was starting to notice two things about auditioning. Either I was mainly happy being there to see all the friends I’ve made over the years or I resented being there at all for the time it was stealing from things I wanted to be doing more. Not good, either of them.

And there is a great, great power in working clean—admitting out loud, to yourself and the universe, that this is what you want. This.

So I’m out. Or on hiatus, as my lovely agent said we should put it.

But really, no matter how you slice it, there are big changes afoot.

And I wouldn’t have it any other way…

xxx
c

Photo by Tartanna via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license

TOPICS: 21 day salutes, Cleaning My Damned Apartment™.

That stack of papers.

You know—that stack.

The one you’ve been stumbling over
on the way to the bed
for four months,
since you dropped them there…

The one that went from white
to dusty gray
to black with hair—
both yours
and the dust bunnies’…

The one
you put down
for just
one
second…

Today
I moved that stack of papers
to a permanent home
in a covered, plastic bin
in its own semi-private sector
of the closet.

Of course
by “permanent”
I mean
“until next time”

If there’s one thing I’ve learned
since I started this thing,
it’s that nothing
lasts forever

Especially dusting…
xxx
c

Photo by Douglas - westbound via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license

TOPICS: 21 day salutes, Cleaning My Damned Apartment™, Poetry Thursday.

There wasn’t a lot of time to tackle new cleaning projects yesterday: it was mostly about clearing project-projects off of my desk. Which I did, to the tune of three.

I even unloaded a couple of fresh packs of address labels I’d never gotten around to using on one of my more beloved clients, the fabulous Miz Jones, after we played cut-and-paste with the mock-up of our latest magnum opus: a presentation leave-behind for potential backers of her latest opera, Songs and Dances of Imaginary Lands.

No, yesterday was not about me tackling Mr. Skanky Fridge or me scrubbing out the bathtub (which desperately needs it—I mean, ew!) But as I blasted through my to-do list before heading out to a friend’s wedding with The BF, I did note how, just over halfway through this experiment, things are subtly starting to shift for me. Because the one thing I have been adamant about through this process is keeping up with the little things.

Like making my bed, every day.

Like emptying the clean dishes from the drainer, every morning.

Like clearing my desktop—both computer and real world—of detritus, every night.

It’s keeping me calmer. It’s giving me breathing room and space to create. It’s—I swear to you—making me more productive.

I used to hate routine chores. To me, they felt like just another iteration of the hobgoblin of little minds. But I had the quotation wrong: it’s foolish consistency that’s the hobgoblin. Some habits—kindness, thoughtfulness, mindfulness—are excellent habits that provide a foundation for great things in life.

Now I see these annoying little tasks as kindnesses I lavish upon myself: small gifts of time and attention to make me feel good. And maybe—just maybe—by making my tiny world a little better and myself feel a little more tended to, I send a happier me out to interact with the world. And then (ohboyohboyohboy) maybe I’m actually making the world a little better of a place for everyone else to live in.

So today, I will wash my morning dishes. Brush my teeth. Empty the trash. (I’ve made the bed already.) And not with a heavy heart, but by choice, because having these things done makes every part of life better.

And then, I’ll get back to work, also by choice. On Labor Day.

Because then, on some random Tuesday afternoon or Thursday morning, I can play.

Consistent wisdom sprinkled with inconsistent foolishness—that’s the ticket…

xxx
c

Photo by X-travaluemeal#2 via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

TOPICS: 21 day salutes, Cleaning My Damned Apartment™, happiness, work.