Day 175: Wrap

Posted on June 25, 2014 by joshdaddy

So apparently, we own a few pieces of Waterford crystal and Haviland china.

I found these pieces tucked away in the china cabinet in our dining room–untouched, and unused, since the day we placed them in that cabinet eleven years ago. I also found a box of more crystal in the basement in a dust-covered box, tucked up on a ledge. These pieces were getting the same amount of use down in the basement as the ones in the dining room.

I’m not sure there is anything inherently wrong with having “fine china,” though I am not entirely sure these pieces of finery are adding any real value to our life.

Actually, I think I am entirely sure: that stuff isn’t adding anything to our quality of life.

But that didn’t stop me from carefully wrapping up each piece in newspaper and placing each one gently in a box.

There are lots of items that my family and I have debated the value of holding onto–everything from kids’ clothes and toys to furniture and linen towels. But with these items–the crystal and the china–I can’t help but thinking: of course we will hold onto these items; they are valuable!

And I’m well aware that the value of these items is of a very special species–one that really has nothing to do with my everyday life.

So what to do, what to do? Do I shed these items as a gesture of firm commitment to living simply? Or do I pack them away and send them off into storage for the next year… and maybe revisit their value at a later date?

I know the more rigorous path to travel, but for tonight the best I can do is continue wrapping items, and continue packing boxes.

So the Waterford and Haviland stays…but perhaps I can let go of that collection of Old Curiosity Shop china that I also found in down the basement in a dusty, untouched box!

 

 

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Day 174: Exhale

Posted on June 23, 2014 by joshdaddy

So I’m just puttering around the house tonight, to be honest.

I pulled some books off of the last remaining bookshelf and sorted out the ones I wanted to keep and the ones I could give away. I left a big stack behind, though, which I will have to get to another day.

Then I wandered into my daughter’s room and looked at all of the “babyish” stuff on top of her dresser (her word, not mine). I cleared off most of it–but left the other dresser and the wall shelf for tomorrow.

Then I dragged a box of old shoes down to the basement and tossed in a few more random household items that we will be donating to charity later this week.

Oh, and I returned a phone call from someone interested in taking my son’s drums off of our hands.

Yup, another exciting blog entry this one is!

I may not have accomplished a lot tonight, but what I noticed in all of this half-hearted clearing up and clearing out was this: I wasn’t stressed.

Yes, we have about three weeks left to finish packing up the house, but for today at least, everything seems OK.

Somehow, we will manage to get it done–the repairs completed, the house emptied, and the boxes loaded.

I’m sure I will pick up the pace again tomorrow, and probably I will pick up my stress as well. For today, though, I’m going to enjoy this moment of assurance that everything will work its way out.

It may seem a bit out of context to quote Julian of Norwich in a conversation about moving boxes and household cluttter… but I’m going to do so anyway:

All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.

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Day 173: Detox

Posted on June 23, 2014 by joshdaddy

Nope, sorry. No lemon juice purges or blueberry smoothies for this detox (though a blueberry smoothie does sound pretty good right about now….)

The truth is, I’ve had a bad case of l’esprit de l’escalier for most of the day.

I didn’t mention it yesterday, but last  night my wife and I went to a dinner with a group of our friends, some of whom we haven’t really seen much in several years. It was pretty much a farewell dinner, even though we don’t leave town for another few weeks.

At one point during dinner, however, one of the guests with a tendency toward–well, let’s just call it strong opinions–slipped into one of her conversational grooves with me and ended up berating me for not agreeing with her outlook. Her crescendo bordered on a verbal attack that pretty much made the whole table uncomfortable.

My response: I told her that I was sitting around that table to celebrate friendship, not engage in debate, and that I would rather not talk about that particular topic any more.

After dinner, my wife and several other people who were at the table responded that I had handled the situation quite well. Personally, though, I couldn’t help but feel like I should have responded in some other way–and said something wittier, more pithy, and ultimately more withering.

So I woke up this morning feeling like I had been exposed to toxins that were still in my system. I was sullen, grumpy, impatient, etc. And I knew exactly why I felt the way I did–unfortunately, though, just knowing the cause didn’t seem to be enough to snap me out of it. I kept running the conversation over and over again in my head.

And unfortunately, I don’t think anyone has whipped up a magical fruit juice blend that will flush emotional toxins.

I’m sure there are some steps I could have taken to help me clear my system–a walk in the woods, some exercise, even some attentive sitting. But no, I told myself there was too much to do around the house to take any time for anything else.

So instead, I had to let time do its trick, which eventually it did.

I’ve been here before–reflecting on the difficulty I have some times in letting go of emotional baggage. And I know it’s really just another form of clutter. Then again, here it is, about 24 hours later, and I think I’ve finally detoxed, and I am ready to let it go.

Believe it or not, that’s progress.

 

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Day 172: Recapitulate

Posted on June 22, 2014 by joshdaddy

IMG_2526Well, we are back in Atlanta after a quick, two-day trip up to North Carolina–and back to stable internet access. A quick recap of yesterday, as promised:

I took the boys up to the old family cemetery–I knew where it was, roughly speaking, but I don’t think my wife or my mother-in-law had ever taken me there. It’s just about a half mile from our home, and right off the Blue Ridge Parkway.

The boys read the dates and names on their great-great grandparents’ gravestones, laid out next to the graves of the five children they lost, all under the age of three years old (three of the markers read “infant” instead of bearing a name). Not too far from these children’s plots laid the grave of their great-grandmother’s first born, who died after just a day. We talked about how hard life was in the country one hundred years ago. And we talked about how long their mother’s side of the family had lived up on this ridge.

The rain started to roll in–big, thick drops falling behind a strong, cool breeze. We started walking the half mile home, then started to jog, debating whether or not running in the rain gets you more wet than walking. But the rain turned out to be a just a passing band of showers and soon tapered off, leaving us mostly dry for the remainder of our walk down the hill and along the ridge that had once all belonged to their great-great grandfather. We paused for a bit down in the field, next to the barn that has been standing there for five generations.

It seemed important to me yesterday to give the boys a sense of their connection to this little corner of the High Country–their past as well as their future.

Today–or tonight, rather–I am also thinking about the past and the future. We have connections to people in Atlanta, but less so to place. Perhaps that’s more the rule than the exception these days. I can’t help but wonder how those connections will change in the coming months and years–who will remain in our ongoing and evolving present and who will become a part of our history.

And what, if anything, will mark our time together? Certainly nothing as permanent as a plot of land, or a well-built barn upon a mountain ridge.

Well… this blog entry is turning into another one of those overly reflective pieces, isn’t it. I better quit while I’m ahead….

 

 

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Day 171:Postpone

Posted on June 20, 2014 by joshdaddy

I really don’t want to do it, but I think I’m going to have to postpone everything I wanted to share with you today. My only internet access has been through my phone’s hot spot, and while that has worked fine in the past–as recently as last night–now my connection is too slow even to load my WP dashboard.

Everything I’ve written so far tonight has been courtesy of my two thumbs on my phone–and that’s not going to work for too many more words….

So I can’t tell you about the family cemetery we “found” today, or the walk back home with a thunderstorm at our heels. I can’t even respond too easily to the comments I’ve received in the past 24 hours other than to offer a generic “thanks–talk to you soon” to you all.

Everything will have to wait until tomorrow….

For now, though, I’m going to go and rest my thumbs!

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Day 170: Vacate

Posted on June 20, 2014 by joshdaddy

Today, I officially tendered my resignation. My last day on campus will be in mid-July; it is going to be a busy final few weeks, but I am very much in the home stretch.

Today I also packed up just about my last box of books. I probably have one box (OK, maybe two…) left to go, plus a few more odds and ends. I also pretty much finished my purge of unnecessary papers, tossing away the last of a stack of articles, essays, and notebooks that I still had squirreled away.

The office that I have occupied for the past eight years will soon no longer be “mine.”

But it’s not just my office that I’m vacating. I am starting to let go of my connections to my current institution. I guess you could say I am vacating my sense of place within this place. Sure, I plan to remain in touch with a number of my colleagues, and I will probably be involved in some ongoing collaborations, but more generally, I am coming to terms with the fact that there is an entire future opening up for my department–and it’s a future that I am not going to be a part of. No guiding of curriculum. No strategic planning. No new program development. It will be all the work of others now.

And that’s fine. It is time to let go.

And of course, as I vacate one institution, I am preparing for arrival at another. And while it would be nice to think that the transition from one to the other would be smooth, I am fully aware that in many ways the experience will transform me in ways that I cannot even begin to imagine.

And that’s fine too. Because letting go isn’t just about the past we’re holding onto; it’s also about the image of ourselves that we project into the future.

And it is time to let go.

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Day 169: Greet

Posted on June 18, 2014 by joshdaddy

Hello, and how are you? I’m so glad our paths have crossed on this journey, even if it is perhaps just for today.

I don’t have a huge following on this blog, and that’s fine by me. I’m always pleasantly surprised with each new follower I receive. And I feel the same way with each comment or “like” that I get on a post. Some of you–four or five–I have known for years. Others I feel I’ve gotten to know over the past six months through your comments and our exchanges. It really has given me a sense of community and contact knowing that there are others out there sharing this journey with me, one day at a time. And even if you have never commented on this site, just knowing that these words have crossed your screen is an enchanting notion. And yes, I suppose there is some ego tangled up in those enchanting emotions, but I also think there’s something else going on–something more rooted in the ways in which our shared words and shared reading can create a community.

So something interesting happened a couple of days ago. I was looking at my stats (yes, I can’t ignore them), and I noticed a bunch of views coming from the country of Rwanda. Then I noticed that I was getting that exact number of single page views from my posts dating back to January. Apparently, someone in Rwanda is reading through my blog in sequential order, starting on Day 1.

The next day and the day after was the same thing–a different number of pages covered each day, but always sequential. As of today, he or she has worked through about half of my blog posts. And in a few more days, he or she will be reading this one–or so I hope.

So I thought it would be nice today to greet you, and to say thank you for traveling this road with me.

And not just to my reader from Rwanda, who has made it to this page, but to you as well.

I’m not sure I could have made it this far without you!

Yes, I am writing this blog for myself as a kind of discipline or practice, but of course every writer has an audience in mind as well. How wonderful it is to receive feedback from that audience while I’m still in the process of working through these daily challenges and ideas.

I started off this blog with a reference to Thoreau, and perhaps he and Emerson haunt more than a few pages here. But unlike Thoreau’s withdrawal from society for two years, two months, and two days, it’s clear to me that while the will to live more simply may arise from an individual, deliberate act, it is best lived–for me at least–within community.

So thanks. I really do appreciate your community and your support.

 

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Day 168: Progress

Posted on June 17, 2014 by joshdaddy

OK, I have to admit it–I’m still feeling a bit overwhelmed.

I was talking to a good friend about this tonight, and she had some really great suggestions on how to find help getting the house cleared and ready for the move: some other donation sites I hadn’t thought of that will pick up furniture, a quick-and-easy auction site that will also pick up items, and so on.

But the best bit of advice she had to offer was this:

You need to do something really focused so that you can see that you are making progress.

She suggested getting the entire family together in one room–and getting that room done. Clear out everything that needs to cleared out, and pack up everything that needs packing.

Absolutely brilliant.

I won’t be doing that tonight–no time for that in the next couple of hours–but it does give me a point of focus for the day, and an opportunity to remind myself that even if I can’t see it too easily right now, we have made a lot of progress… not just in preparing for this move, but in decluttering and simplifying our household.

But it’s important to see it.

And that’s true for those “inside jobs” as well.

I’m all for being in process (I’ll spare you the appropriate Emerson quote), but today is a day in which I really need to take a moment to acknowledge the progress we have made over the past six months.

 

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Day 167: Wane

Posted on June 16, 2014 by joshdaddy

So it’s back into the thick of it at the house. We have junk everywhere right now. The pod out front is half full (I guess I’m an optimist, right?), boxes are everywhere in various states of packing, and there’s still some big pieces of furniture that need to get out of the house and over to a donation site as soon as possible.

So why waning for today? Shouldn’t I be waxing?

It’s more of a reference to my emotional state. Because when I walked in the house today, it did not look like the home of someone less than 30 days from a move date. And it certainly didn’t look like the home of someone with 166 days of de-cluttering and minimizing behind him, that’s for sure.

Standing in the middle of all of that chaos, I could feel everything start to rise up inside of me. Anxiety. Frustration. Feelings of being overwhelmed. And so on.

But…

Instead of acting out on these feelings (stomping about the house barking orders, fussing at the kids for not picking up after themselves, helplessly waving my hands in the air and sighing heavily–that sort of thing), I let the feelings rise up…and then I let them do what all feelings do: fade away.

There’s still lots of work that needs to be done before we move. And there will be plenty of opportunities to practice this watching of emotions as they wax and wane. And I’m sure there will be plenty of times when I do end up acting out on them in some way.

But for today, for a moment at least, I seemed to get it right.

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Day 166: Father

Posted on June 16, 2014 by joshdaddy

Ok, it is late, and I just got home after a delayed flight back from Texas, so I’m going to keep this one short.

Years back, when I first started teaching, I would get my students to think about how we define the verbs “to mother” and “to father” in English, and what this might say about our cultural assumptions regarding gender roles and parenting. It was a pretty useful exercise.

I’d like to think that, for all the mistakes and missteps I make along the way, I try to model for my sons–and my daughter–a much broader definition of what it means to father a child.

Today, we had an hour or so to kill before my oldest boy had to compete in speed finals. We found a bookstore not too far away from the gym, with a coffee shop inside it. My son asked if he could borrow a few dollars and wandered off through the store.

We met back by the coffee shop–I got myself a coffee and got my son a hot chocolate. And he gave me the Fathers Day card he had just picked out for me.

At first, I was planning on sharing with you what he wrote–and how in just a few sentences he managed to express so well what being a father means to me.

But I think I’d like to keep what he wrote to me just between the two of us, if that’s OK with you. I’ve shed a lot of paper over the past few months, but this card I’m planning to keep.

Even with the airport delay, I think today might have been the best Fathers Day ever.

 

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