The year of doing as little as possible...

I've been pondering a post for weeks now, but always when my computer is off.

I've begun to think of 2012 as "the year of doing as little as possible," AKA a sabbatical of sorts.  A vacation from my permanent vacation.

Basically this means that I'm not pushing myself to do any more creative work than what wants to happen of its own accord.  Yes, it still requires gumption on my part.  But I'm striving to not feel as though I must make art just because all my artist friends are doing so or because I created a lot of stuff in the past.

This is harder for me to do than it sounds.  Which I think is what this sabbatical thing is all about for me ~ learning to not feel guilty for not producing a bunch of stuff, and for not feeling motivated or inspired.

I just don't.  That's what's so.

Silent Night

I am blessed with an ample amount of silence in my life.  An auditory environment over which I have nearly complete control.  I am especially sensitive to sound, noise more specifically.  So much of what surrounds us these days is noise of one sort or another -- loud, obnoxious, jarring, everything competing for attention.  I find it not just distracting, but absolutely crazy-making.

People used to ask me all the time whether I watched TV or listened to radio or music while I created my art ~ TV especially, since most people, I suspect, have the TV on day and night.  Nobody wanted to believe me when I said I worked in "silence," no sound input except life itself happening all around me.  No man-made "entertainment" added. 

Actually, truth be told, it's not silent inside my head.  In addition to not hearing well, I have had auditory nerve damage for many years.  So "silent" to me is really a level of white noise in both ears.  Not ringing, like with tinnitus.  More like hissing that never stops.  I'm used to it so it doesn't bother me, but I always know it's there.

Occasionally I will listen to music in the studio, one of a few favorite CDs.  Mostly, though, I'd rather listen to the hissing inside my head than nearly anything else. Except the wind and the rain and birdsong.

Wishing you peaceful holidays.  Hope you have an opportunity to enjoy the gift of silence.

Footnote

As a footnote to my last post about the goals thing, I invite you to read this post from one of "the minimalists" on zenhabits blog ~ both blogs on my sidebar as well.

Have a great weekend ~ goal free and loving it!

Christmas in Reality

December is traditionally a time when people begin to set goals for the coming year.  I've certainly done my share of that over the years.  I used to methodically record everything I did and what I planned to do and where I hoped to be and how much I hoped to have, of whatever.  Some years I made it or got close to the mark (i.e., met my own likely-rigid, high-even-for-me expectations), some years I wasn't in the ballpark.

So much of it is out of our control.  All the material stuff, anyhow.  The only thing we have control over is how we respond to whatever happens.

I don't have goals anymore....of the must-see, need-to, gotta-have variety.   None of it really matters to me one way or the other.  I'm not going out of my way to try to get something or make something happen that isn't destined to be of its own accord.  Because what shows up instead is far better, anyway.  And that's here-and-now reality.  Which is where we actually live.

I've been rereading Jon Kabat-Zinn's Wherever You Go, There You Are.  If you haven't read it, essentially it is a manual of tools for being mindful in your everyday life.   So in light of my thinking about goals and not having them, what Jon writes about non-doing is especially meaningful.  "The only way you can do anything of value is to have the effort come out of non-doing and to let go of caring whether it will be of use or not.  Otherwise, self-involvement and greediness can sneak in and distort your relationship to the work, or the work itself, so that it is off in some way, biased, impure, and ultimately not completely satisfying, even if it is good."

My shortened take on that ~ Follow your heart and see what emerges.

Deep Cleaning

I've been lamenting at how dusty my home has become.  I haven't seriously dusted since I first moved in here nearly three years ago.  I vacuum regularly, but I've been hesitant to spend the energy dusting when things are just dusty again in a couple weeks.  My dust, though, is pretty thick.

Suddenly, the other evening I was inspired to do a sometimes-annual go-through of everything, to get rid of more stuff I don't need anymore or I've found some other thing I have that will suffice, or I simply want fewer things to have to dust whenever I do get around to it.

Well that was a perfect correspondence of want and need, and I spent most of this weekend deep cleaning my place, little bits at a time.  I expect it to continue for the rest of this week.  And that's okay.  Because once I get into this exercise (cleaning and discarding), I really enjoy it.

I like finding new uses for stuff, shuffling things around, reorganizing, consolidating.  We get things set up just the way we like them, and eventually take it all for granted and forget that we can change it up.  That changing up thing is a wonderful creative activity and always spawns new inspiration for me.  Gives me an opportunity, too, to live with things I love that maybe I haven't seen in a while.

Recently I took down all the art in my studio that was for sale, and replaced it all with stuff I'm keeping, work I love and want to look at and live with.  What a concept.

Change is good.

Head in the Clouds

I spend as much time as I can with my head in the clouds ~ literally.  Sky and cloud watching.

I'm fortunate that I live in a place that supports my habit.  I'm just a few steps from a bluff overlooking the Eel River valley, facing west-southwest, about five miles from the ocean as the crow flies.  For cloud and sunset watching, this is the place.

The sky is a perfect metaphor for life ~ it's always different.  Clouds form, they move and change continuously, they dissipate.  As the Tao says, "You cannot step twice into the same stream."

Just like life itself and every individual aspect of it over the course of our existence, everything changes, everything is ephemeral.  The key is to learn to enjoy everything, even stuff that isn't what we want.  Because it will change.  And things we don't like change more quickly if we embrace them, and then let them go.

Go to Sky Journal to see the sky from my perspective, almost daily.

Shop Til You Drop

Random thoughts from paradise ~

I'll pay off my car this week, my last payment.  Now I truly don't owe anybody anything.  The interesting thing is that despite my very low monthly intake, I managed to pay off a 6-year note in just over 3 years.  Amazing.  I have no debt, no monthly payments over and above regular living expenses. 

Twenty years ago I lived and worked in San Francisco.  Shopping, then, was going to Nordstrom, which coincidentally I could see from my office window downtown.  Shopping now is going to the Dollar Store and the thrift shops, Target if I'm feeling really flush.

Now I make a game of seeing how little I can spend from week to week between trips into Eureka for major food shopping and other stuff.  The thing is, I don't need anything.  I'm not going without, it's just that I have everything I need.  I also try to make what I do have last as long as possible.  And I'll use things up before I buy more.  I don't have a lot of space to store stuff I'm not using, so this strategy works well for me.

I'm a lot happier now than I used to be.  One thing in particular I really like about not buying much stuff anymore is that when I was an active shopper/buyer, especially of clothes, I was never happy with what I'd bought, even if I liked it when I bought it.  It never seemed like the right thing.  There were always things I liked more.  So I was on this perpetual treadmill of shopping, purchasing, returning whatever I could and looking for a replacement.  And still never felt satisfied. 

Another thing, the constant goading to upgrade everything is bullshit.  Unless it's absolutely necessary, like something breaks and can't be fixed, then I refuse to buy newer/better/different.  Because at best, upgrades are a headache and require learning new stuff I don't necessarily want to learn.  At worst, upgrades are really downgrades.  Like, the thing, whatever it is, has been reconfigured so that it doesn't work as well as the old one did, but it's been marketed as though it was the greatest thing since sliced bread.

Case in point ~ those newfangled bagless vacuum cleaners.  I had an old Hoover upright that I loved and it worked well.  When I moved a couple years ago it didn't look like I'd need it, so I gave it to a friend.  A year later I realized I did need a vacuum, so I bought a Bissell bagless.  That thing was a pain in the ass.  The hose wouldn't stretch more than three feet before the vacuum tipped over.  The vacuum sounded like it sucked well but it didn't.  On one height setting it didn't pick up any dirt at all...on the next height setting it sucked so hard you couldn't move it across the rug.  The only thing that worked was the little turbo brush attachment.  So I had to use that to vacuum the rugs.  But you had to hold it at a certain angle to the surface or it wouldn't work.  Picture me on my hands and knees with the turbo brush on the end of a plastic extension tube, and the vacuum continually tipping over and hitting me in the back.

And then there was the fact that cleaning the bagless apparatus parts took tons of time, wasted a lot of water, and the filters took days to dry -- when all I previously had to do was replace the vacuum bag a couple times a year and throw it in the trash, no mess no fuss.

Long story long, I traded the virtually new Bissell to my friend and got my old Hoover back!  I plan to use it for the rest of my life.

Having more and supposedly better stuff does not make you happier.  It just makes you poorer and proves you've fallen into another cultural trap.  Live with what you've got, or do without and learn how to entertain yourself.  You'll be a better person for it.

Ordinariness

I've been mentally kicking around the idea of writing a book...The Pauper's Guide to Living the Good Life.  Problem is, if I'm writing about it, then I'm not living it.  It likely won't get written.

Mostly, though, I'm just not into the self promotion thing.  Too many years of "giving people my resume" so to speak ~ trying to prove I was the best person for the job or that I'd earned a raise or a bonus or simply appreciation for a job well done, trying to stay ahead of the game, to rise to the top of the heap, to prove I was better than whomever or whatever I was confronted with...trying to speak louder than everyone else to get potential buyers' attention with my art, trying to promote myself up the ying yang.

I really just want to be ordinary now.  No self aggrandizement, no entitlement, no grandiosity, no expectation that anything is owed to me.  Because it's not.  I grew up with all those other attitudes; I think when you feel not as good as for so long you tend to overcompensate by thinking you're better than or that the world owes you a living because you've suffered.  I'm extraordinary in my own way, like the rest of us.  The truth is, I really don't like drawing attention to myself.  Never have.  I want to fade into the background, keep my head down.

Being ordinary feels like grace.  That sense of "just so-ness," nothing special, staying calm, here and now, just living and doing my best at whatever I do because that's just how I am.

Footprint

I've been embracing these words recently in thinking about myself ~ witch, hermit, feral, recluse.  The more I learn about what works for me, the less I desire to be out in the world.

I'm seeking some sort of invisibility.  I want to deeply experience my life without feeling as though I need to talk about it.  I'm not referring here to sharing on this blog.  I am, though, referring to most of the sharing and commenting I did while I participated in social media.

And it's not about being uncomfortable with vulnerability.  It's about the fact that I know that for me, underneath the sharing of who I am, what I think about things in general, and how I do things in life, is the desire for acceptance and approval.  And after a lifetime of approval- and acceptance- and agreement-seeking, I just want to follow my own muse, my own inner guidance system through life. 

I am a highly sensitive person.  I always have been, yet I have finally stripped away enough of the chaff of life to discover this reality for myself and what it means for my life.  It explains a lot about who I am and how I operate.

Likely more on this later.