img courtesy sxc

Yesterday, I spent 5+ hours cleaning my 7 year old daughter’s bedroom. I had spent several additional hours a week or so ago just going through her clothing and purging anything that didn’t fit, was unfit to wear, or that she just didn’t like.

All together, I removed 11 trash bags of stuff from her bedroom, which is about a 10′ x 11′ space. About half of that went to Goodwill, and half of it went to the dumpster.  Here’s the really crazy thing: I did basically the same thing a year and a half ago when she, her brother, and her dad all went to Arizona on vacation.

At one point, I had her stuff spread out covering the kitchen table, all down the hallway, and in various piles in her room. I was burning daylight trying to get it purged to the point that we could let the dog back into the house without fear that he’d eat something toxic or dangerous. (He’s a pug. They’re not smart animals.) 

But I did get it all done, and now she has easy access to the stuff she loves and uses regularly, and when I tell her to pick up her stuff and put it away, there’s actually more “away space” than stuff.

You have no idea how badly I was dreading tackling this task. For one thing, she has a bad habit of sneaking food into her room. I was pretty certain I was going to find gross stuff (and I did). It was a dirty, nasty, hard, unpleasant task.

But I’m so glad I did it, and that I stuck with the task till it was completely done.

I think decluttering your physical environment emotionally resembles defragging your hard drive. Remember that? Your computer would start bogging down. You’d already done File Cleanup. So you’d go into System Tools, bite the bullet, and defrag.

You knew it would take FOREVER. You knew you couldn’t get anything else done while it was running. But you also knew that it would actually help make things faster and make it easier to get things done.

Defragmenting is basically organizing for the optimal use of the available space. That’s really what decluttering is: organizing for the optimal use of your physical space.

• Getting rid of the stuff that’s utterly useless
• Grouping similar things together, and
• Prioritizing the groups so that the stuff you use most often is most easily accessible.

This is important to our family right now. We’re either going to get a buyer for our house, or remodel it to fit our needs this year. Either way, we have to get rid of all the useless clutter. I’m sure as heck not packing and moving it. Plus, I’m working from home quite a bit right now, and the more cluttered my home gets, the harder it is to remain productive here.

I want to do a lot more writing in 2012 than I did in 2011, and it’s hard to do that when I feel the clutter screaming at me. Seriously. It screams at my soul like a wet Mogwai.  Quite distracting.

It sounds so easy, but it’s so hard to actually make yourself do it.

Partly it’s the “I might uncover disgusting stuff that I will then have to touch to get rid of it” thing. But I think the bigger part is how bad you feel about yourself for letting inanimate stuff overwhelm and master you.

But then, if you just keep trucking on, and keep addressing this thing and that thing until you eventually get to the end. And it feels wonderfully freeing.

What about you? What do you always dread doing, but always feel great after you get it done?

Fellow web nerd Chris Brogan regularly distills his “New Year’s resolutions” into three code-word themes.  Last week, he once again sent out a year-end reminder and request for people to do likewise.  I don’t always play along, but this year in particular it seemed like a good tool for what I have planned.

My three words for this year are:

Dispel ~ Root ~ Shine

Dispel:  Over the course of 2011, and particularly in the last half of the year, it became clear that I have been letting a lot of illusions and lies seep into my perspective and guide my behavior. This year, I need to remind myself constantly to connect to the truth, and dispel any dishonest or destructive illusions.  Keeping my vision clear is vital to staying on the right path.

Root:  My tendency is to run. I have a very active, restless spirit. But energy without a certain amount of rootedness and connection doesn’t have any traction. You just end up flurrying in circles.  ”Much activity but little gain” has been an unfortunate theme for me. This year, I’m working on rooting myself in vital relationships and life-giving truth.

Shine: I struggle a lot with my own visibility. I’m perennially uncomfortable with how comfortable I am being the center of attention. It’s something that could very easily become a destructive idol. So I waffle between seeking attention and “hiding my light under a bushel.”  The word shine is a reminder to simply do good things, and share my life appropriately, with a spirit of honesty and humility.

Do you have resolutions? Three words? One word? Themes? Goals? Send ‘em my way in the comments.

[For the non-social-media nerds, a hashtag is a way that you can mark tweets by topic with a keyword, to make them easier to find later. There are other uses for hashtags, but that's part of my day job doing web marketing.]

I mean something fairly specific when I say “life is attention.”  It’s shorthand for a bigger idea. When I say “life is attention,” I’m reminding myself of a simple but vital truth:

While you give something your attention, you’re giving it that part of your life.

Our experience of life is filtered. For an idea of what I mean when I say “filtered,” check out the movie Limitless to see a guy who has the filters on his attention and perception removed. To get all biblical on y’all, “For now we see now as through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.” Our wee human brains are only picking up 3 snowy channels, but reality is actually 900 channels in high def 3D.  

But back to the idea of attention. If your life is a movie, your attention is the director of photography. Attention is the porthole through which we experience our lives.  And we all leave it on autopilot a rather alarming amount of the time.

Also, I personally have issues with attention and focus. My attention is like a shopping cart or steering wheel that pulls to one side or the other.  Just keeping on a path is sometimes difficult. It can be hard work, but I’ve learned that if I don’t manage my attention, it will create situations that will manage me.

So managing attention is a big deal for me. It is probably the one thing I have control over which has the biggest impact on the story I’m telling with my life.  So I need constant reminders that when I’m dealing with my attention, hard as it may be, it’s important.

As with everything else in life, I’m going to be posting notes here as I have little insights, or hit into particularly thorny problems in managing attention. If you have any good stuff to share about managing your attention, drop it in the comments or hit me up on twitter. Feel free to steal #lifeisattention if you think it’d be helpful to you.

And I’ve been fool and I’ve been blind
I could never leave the past behind
I can see no way, I can see no way
I’m always dragging that horse around
All of these questions, such a mournful sound
Tonight I’m gonna bury that horse in the ground
Cause I like to keep my issues strong
Its always darkest before the dawn

I first heard this song on WFPK one morning on my (early!) commute to work, and was immediately struck by the lyrics.  This time of year is always a little hard on me.  That’s probably why I post very little here.  There are dark memories in my past associated with this time of year, and I struggle with being drawn back to the past. It’s odd that I have such a hard time keeping my attention anchored in the present, because things are really going beautifully well for me right now.

You’d think your attention would focus on the beautiful stuff, the positive stuff, the happy stuff, but it doesn’t. At least mine doesn’t. There’s always a pull, a habit of attention to focus on what’s missing and what’s wrong. That habit of attention makes me good at critique and sort of awful at appreciation, although I sometimes overcompensate and hand out thanks and kudos like mini Snickers bars on Halloween.

What I love about this Florence + the Machine song is that the prescriptive is right there in the lyrics, in fact, it’s the chorus: “Shake it off, shake it off, shake it off.”  And I think the repetition is necessary. When you’re breaking old habits, you need a lot of reminders.

It is hard to dance with the devil on your back, and I invite him for a piggyback ride way more than I realize.

I shake him off when I focus on the present. I shake him off when I pay attention to my blessings and live immersed in those blessings. “Appreciating” them quietly and from afar doesn’t really cut it. But dancing wildly with my daughter in the kitchen? Walking and chattering endlessly every day or so with my husband and best friend? Throwing myself with abandon into the most enjoyable tasks I have at work?  That shakes off the gloom pretty well.

I love to write, and writing is where I do some of my “soul work” but I’ve learned it has to be balanced with living.  In the words of Thoreau, “How vain is it to sit down to write, when you have not stood up to live?”  Writing out my feelings can become a way of dragging around the dead horses in my past. I didn’t come back to the page for a while (other than work writing, obviously) until I had stood up to live for a while, to create new experiences, to gather up some fresh prima materia for the work.

But I’m in a better place right now. I’m getting out of my head and into the world enough now, that I think I can take a few breaks to write things down a bit more.

Do you find that the past is more motivating, or demotivating, in how you behave in the present? Do you have a good balance of introspection and action in your life?

I hope you all have a really good weekend.

img courtesy kwod on sxc

Chris and I decided to create new characters and play through the first two Mass Effect games, this time making choices bearing in mind what we know about the last game in the series. We also wanted one last run through each to see some of the differences in plot that would come from making different choices.

Discussing which character class we’d be playing was an interesting study in our different approaches to life in general, and our different perspectives on leadership.

Chris traditionally takes the “runs in first guns blazing” approach. In a D&D context, that would be a “Defender” role. Draw as much fire as you can, and put a serious hurt on everything in your path. That’s definitely one approach to leadership.

On the other hand, I almost never take a role that involves me running in ahead of everyone else. My playing style tends to focus on healing and boosting (aka “buffing”) my teammates, while disabling or taking out opponents from a distance and occasionally taking over for the AI on my teammates and directing their actions from a position of clear visibility (which is often at the back of  the fight).

When talking about the kind of characters I like to play, Chris said “To me, that feels like sitting on the sidelines of your own game.” But I don’t sit passively on the sidelines. I’m taking a very active role–in fact, I’m usually paying as much attention to what’s happening with the other people on the team as what’s happening with my own character.

I think that in our culture particularly, we tend to associate “leadership” with “the guy up front.” In personality typing terms, we live in a very Three culture, and Threes tend to be highly visible.

I’m not saying that’s a bad leadership model–it works for many people.  I’m just saying it’s not the only leadership model.  Sometimes leadership is using your muscle (either literal muscle, or a vigorous personality) to break new ground, but sometimes it’s standing further back, and using your cognitive and strategic skills to find the best path forward for the whole team.

As a 4w5 personality type, my leadership strengths are primarily creative problem solving and strategy. I’ve got a flair for drama that means I can be up front and center if needed, but I work best directing and guiding things from a more behind the scenes vantage point, especially if it gives me additional time to think things through.  Chris is a 9w1 personality, but his security point (the energy he follows when he’s most secure and confident) is 3, so it’s probably natural that his inclination is to be more direct.

Do you consider yourself a leader? What is your leadership style? What are the advantages of how you approach a challenge?

My sisters both live in much more typically suburban or straight-up rural neighborhoods, with no sidewalks, long driveways and big distances between houses.  My house is at the end of a dead end in a small town neighborhood with small lots, front porches, and sidewalks.  A few of my neighbors go completely, marvelously overboard with decorations. It’s one of those “people truck their kids in from elsewhere” trick-or-treating locations.

This year, in addition to the always-exceptional trunk-or-treat at the Methodist church, the new Baptist church plant that meets in the Senior Center set up with bags of candy and invitations in front of the municipal basketball court. It encourages me to see other Jesus followers loving on the neighborhood and, like Jesus, meeting people where they are with kindness. Happy All Saints, y’all.

My neighborhood is also close to the kids’ elementary school, as well as the preschool most of them attended, so it’s not just about the candy and decorated houses, it’s like the pre-teen and preschool social networking event of the year.

There was a lot of waving and hugging and “Hey! There’s so-and-so!” as if they hadn’t seen these people three hours earlier. Of course, three hours earlier, they probably weren’t dressed up as a ladybug or a ninja.

As for the grown-ups, Chris & Josh handed out candy. Once again, I was impressed with how gracious my sometimes-sullen teenager can be. He found something to compliment about nearly every costume and kid who came up to the table while I was with him.  While the small ones were playing and checking out their haul, the grown ups had soup and cornbread, hot cider and cold drinks, and a lot of conversation at our kitchen table. It was nice.

Do you have “new” family traditions that have started in your generation? How are they different from the traditions you grew up with? How are they the same?

I hope you had a warm and happy evening, no matter how you spent it.

*another reason I was always into drama and theatre. Aside from the obvious costumery, there’s always chocolate in whatever closet/green room you’ve configured.