Day 15: Ignore

Posted on January 15, 2014 by joshdaddy

Must. Not. Click. On. Stats!Something terrible happened yesterday: nobody visited my blog! I mean really–how am I supposed to live more simply if you’re not reading about it?

Trust me, I get the irony of blogging daily about living simply. I also get that nothing is ever written without some audience in mind (even if that audience is only a future self). And I also fully accept that it is downright blogger blasphemy to say I’m never going to pay attention to my site’s stats, or that I will do nothing to try to grow an audience.

But still….

You don’t have to get to know me for too long to realize that I tend to get a bit obsessive about, well, whatever I have the opportunity to get obsessive about. So, give me a great tool like WordPress to play with, and sure–I’ll start obsessing on my numbers, and who is finding me through which search terms, and from what countries. And so on.

It struck me, though, that if I am going to get too obsessed about traffic, and likes, and comments, and so on, then I’m really (stating the obvious here, I know) losing sight of why I started this blog in the first place. My goal is to chronicle a yearlong experiment in living simply–and hopefully more deliberately–not to blog for a year and find stuff to fill each daily entry, attracting a large and constantly growing audience along the way. At least that’s what I think my goal is….

So today’s challenge: ignore all those stats!

So, I peeked this morning. Not a lot of traffic again today. I had to make a conscious effort the rest of the day to avoid clicking on the WordPress app on my phone.

Then I peeked again around 10:30, but only because I needed to get a screen capture for this blog post.

Honestly.

It’s going to be a tricky line to ride for the rest of this year, I can tell. I want to stay with the commitment of a daily experiment, and a daily blog post reflection on that experiment: but how do I keep the process of this daily practice from becoming too self-reflexive, or too gimmicky? Or too self-indulgent?

So as halfhearted an attempt as I made today to ignore those stats, it at least provided me with an opportunity to reflect on the process of building a daily practice. If writing a blog is the necessary scaffolding, then perhaps I need to ignore the fact that sometimes that scaffolding may be more obvious than at other times–and sometimes it may be all that I can see. But as long as I’m continuing to build a practice, I can live with that.

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Day 14: Pace

Posted on January 14, 2014 by joshdaddy

That little chest cold I was fighting off on Sunday pretty much knocked me off my feet yesterday. So last night, I made up a pot of chicken soup with lots of noodles, loaded up on cough medicine, and then climbed into bed before 10pm. That’s probably the first time I’ve done that in many, many months. When 6am rolled around, I was feeling much better, though still on the mend. It would have been wonderful to stay in bed the rest of the day, but there were at least two or three things I really needed to do today, and if I didn’t get to them, it would create bigger complications for me further down the line.

So: I got to thinking–what if today I only did what was really important?

I tend to run a little late to things. It’s not because I don’t want to be on time–it’s because I am always trying to squeeze in just one or two more things in that last fifteen minutes. In effect, I end every day with a whole bunch of accomplishments…plus an equally long list of things that I was trying to get to, but just couldn’t seem to find the time.

Being sick is a drag, no doubt about it. But it is forcing me to pace myself today. After thinking about it for a little while, I decided that there were really only six things I absolutely had to do today:

  1. Attend a candidate’s “vision” talk
  2. Meet with my program coordinators
  3. Pick up banh mi sandwiches for tomorrow’s lunch with my staff
  4. Pick up my son
  5. Make dinner
  6. Write this blog post

Anything else just can’t be on my plate today.

The hard part isn’t going to be getting these six things done–the challenge will be in resisting the urge to insert an ever-expanding list of activities between each task. And that’s today’s real experiment in living simply: instead of doing what I normally would do (“just one more thing….”) can I say to myself “just this is enough for today”?

I’ve already taken care of #1 & #2 (and obviously I am in the midst of #6 right now). The Vietnamese takeout place is very close to my son’s school, so in about an hour I will take care of #3 & #4 (and yes, if you have ever had a good banh mi sandwich, you would agree that #3 is something I absolutely must do today.) I could push the dinner duty on to my wife, but I have something simple planned already, so no big deal there.

Six things in one day. That seems like the proper pace, for today.

And when 10pm rolls around, I think I may try for a record and get 8hrs of sleep two nights in a row!

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Day 13: Stow

Posted on January 13, 2014 by joshdaddy

But it's so dark and lonely in there!OK, another really simple, but harder-than-it-sounds challenge for today: put away the phone.

Yes, I love being connected to my family and friends with a mobile device. Yes, I use social media, and yes, I have the WordPress app on my phone. But I think it would be a useful exercise if I could distance myself from all of that connectivity, if only a bit.

There are a couple of natural times/places where I could do this. First: the car. Not that I am texting and driving… but, I have been known to take a quick look at the weather at a long stoplight, or maybe a peek at my email, or maybe just sneak a glance at my blog stats (oh sure, I’m the only one, right?)

So today, on the drive to work, I just stowed the phone in a drawer currently home to a few CDs, a couple of pens, and an oyster shell–just far enough out of reach to make it a bit harder to pick it up at a stoplight. I think if I get a phone call, I will still answer it, but other than that, why not disconnect for that relatively short period when I’m driving? I’ve already pretty much unplugged on my morning drive, since I am still in the habit of driving in silence. On the drive home, I can do without plugging my phone in for music.

The other natural place to disconnect is from late night through early morning. I am still starting off the day with quiet sitting, but there have certainly been plenty of mornings when the first thing I do after that first cup of coffee is to check my email.

I thought about walking out to the car at night and stowing my phone in that same drawer, but that seemed unnecessarily complex. Plus, I do use my phone as an alarm in the morning sometimes. So what I will do instead is take my phone upstairs when our youngest goes to bed–around 9:30pm–and leave it on my dresser until the next day. That means not picking up my phone until after I get out of the shower, around 7am or so. That’s nearly 10 hrs unplugged! Granted, I will be asleep for six of those hours, but still….

Let’s see how it goes. Just don’t “like” this post after 9:30 tonight, ok?

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Day 12: Rest

Posted on January 12, 2014 by joshdaddy

Not a very exciting entry, I realize, but one that is actually pretty hard for me.

I’m really good at doing. It’s the not doing that is more of the challenge. So today, all I am trying to do is to take some time to rest and recuperate. I’m on the verge of a chest cold, and I know that resting will help–my normal instinct would be to plow through the day, sickness be damned. Instead, today I’m sipping tea, reading, and taking it easy. I even tried to take a nap. Amazing stuff, right?

It’s not that my goal is to do nothing; rather, I would like to try to make all my actions today reflect an attention toward rest and recuperation. Goodness knows on any give day, my actions tend to be far more restive than restful.

That should be enough writing for an entry on “rest,” don’t you think?

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Day 11: Demote

Posted on January 11, 2014 by joshdaddy

IMG_1742A tool is only a tool if it’s something you use, right?

Otherwise, it’s just clutter.

Take, for instance, my kitchen tool drawer. Much like my pantry, it’s the sort of little thing that eats at me every day, but I’ve grown so accustomed to its annoyance that I take it for a fact, rather than something I can change.

Crazy, I know.

So today, I demoted every “tool” in the drawer that I didn’t plan to use in the next few weeks, sending them off to a storage space in the basement. Some of those things I am pretty sure I won’t be using any time soon, for example:

  • A turkey-shaped cookie cutter
  • Pumpkin carving tools
  • duplicate (or triplicate ) sets of corkscrews, can openers and salad tongs

Then there was the stuff that I will never use again. Those “tools” went straight to the trash or recycling. Next: the flatware drawer, which has devolved into a drop site for packets of soy sauce, phone chargers, twist-ties, etc. etc. Anything that didn’t have a function of carrying food to one’s mouth, or from a serving dish Tool Drawer, Simplifiedto one’s plate, either found a new home or ended up in the trash.

It’s good to point out (to myself at least), that what I was doing, while certainly a kind of chore, was ultimately aimed at simplifying my life in the kitchen– and I spend a lot of time in my kitchen. The new, Spartan drawers have everything I need on a daily basis, and nothing cluttering up my space with the tug of “someday I might need this.”

I was on a roll–and even tackled the dreaded “utility” drawer, which  is currently held together with duct tape as a result of over-stuffing and subsequent yanking open. I can’t even tell you some of the stuff I found in there and discarded… because I have no idea what some of those stray pieces of metal and plastic once belonged to. Other stuff I simply thinned out. I need a few rubber bands, but probably not a couple of hundred.That's a Lot of Rubber Bands…

As I moved on, I managed to free up an entire drawer, discarding sippy cups, drink covers, and bibs that we are long, long beyond needing. I even found a weird microwave egg poacher that I probably got as a Christmas gift several years back. For a moment I found myself thinking, “This could come in handy some day.”

Then I chucked it in recycling and called it day.

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Day 10: Cancel

Posted on January 10, 2014 by joshdaddy

Cancel_2I am not a luddite by any means.

We are pretty wired in our house. We have our phone service with data plans, our internet, our land-line, our cable, Tivo, and Xbox Live. There’s just no way I’m going to cancel it all. Not now, at least–and most likely not any time this year (who knows, though, where all this might lead me, right?)

But in the spirit of “little steps,” yesterday’s delete-fest got me thinking about what other digital tethers I could cut from my daily life. The first thing that came to mind was that “convenient” automatic payment to a second gym that my wife set up when she needed access to a pool while recovering from a heel injury that kept her from running. No one has been to that gym in probably six months, though it keeps on tugging at us–yes, through a monthly charge, but more through that nagging sense of obligation (if I’m paying for it, shouldn’t I be using it?)

It turns out canceling that membership is not that simple— you have to do it in person, or mail in a form. I guess I will be making a pit-stop on the way home from work: I might as well step foot in our second gym once….

The next thing I looked at was cable. While I’ve known some friends who have cut the cord entirely, or gone to streaming media only, we’re not there yet. Whatever I accomplished today was going to have to be decidedly small-scale.

So maybe today’s “cancel” is more symbolic than substantial. Or more accurately perhaps: it’s more of a warm up, a way of getting used to an orientation toward “subscriptions” and “services” that moves me from a default of “upgrade now” to a focus on thinning out of, and weaning off of, unneeded add-ons.

A few moments of online chat, and it’s goodbye to HBO. Sure, on a rare occasion it comes in handy to have the premium channels (there’s that archival fallacy once again, rearing its dusty head), but for the most part all four (or is it five?) of our HBO channels have gone unwatched since The Sopranos cut to black. And Showtime? We got it for Nurse Jackie…and haven’t really tuned into it since.

Have I changed my world by canceling two premium channel packages? Of course not. Sure, saving $22 (plus another $30 off that gym membership, once I cut that cord) each month will make our financial entanglements a little less complicated, but I think the biggest impact is this change in orientation, which has me now asking: What else can I cancel? What else can I do without?

Maybe the Tivo service on the DVR upstairs, which is connected to a television set that no one ever watches? But let’s not rush into anything–I don’t want to get too radical!

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Day 9: Delete

Posted on January 9, 2014 by joshdaddy

DeleteI know, I know: It’s not like all that data is taking up a lot of physical space, or physically weighing me down, so what’s the big deal? True enough. And yes, while I’m solidly “in the yellow” on my inbox capacity, I’m still a few hundred megabytes away from reaching my account storage limit….

But do I really need 31,692 emails in my inbox?

There’s a certain archival impulse I have–be that with email, or provisions in the pantry, or scraps of “important” papers. I like to hold onto stuff “just in case.” I never know when I might need garam masala–and even though I haven’t used it for as long as I’ve had two of my three children, and even though it probably has about as much flavor left in it as the dust that has gathered on its lid, I still hold on to it…just in case.

Not quite hording, but still: I’m holding onto a lot of stuff that I just don’t need.

“Data clutter” is so easy to let pile up because it plays right into my archival fantasy that some day in the future I will have a compelling need to check out what email I received on June 29, 2006. Or better yet: I’m saving this stuff for posterity, right?

Or not.

Granted, there have been times when I have been able to pull a rabbit out of a hat by digging down deep into my email archive. But seriously: do I need all my iTunes receipts? Delta and Expedia itineraries dating back to 2010?

Now, even if I only took one second to review each email, there’s no way I am going to invest the 8+ hours it would take to review 31,692 individual correspondences. Time to bulk delete and hold onto only those electronic documents that have some legitimate need for archiving–HR correspondences, student issues, etc.

I tried purging by date, but that turned out to be too time consuming, since it still meant scanning subject lines to see if I did, in fact, need to hold onto an email. A better strategy: search by subject line. Delete all email with “pizza” in the subject heading. Even more effective: purge by sender. And there was certainly something satisfying about seeing a couple of hundred emails sent to me by this or that person (not you, of course!) over many, many years vanish with a single click.

In the time I could give to this purge in one day, I only managed to delete around 10% of my inbox, which doesn’t sound like much. But then I remembered the original definition of the word “decimate.”

DeletedI decimated my inbox. That sounded much better!

It’s a small step, but hopefully I can continue to decimate my inbox on a regular basis.

And of course, all of this attention to my “archival fallacy” got me to think about all of the other things that I am still holding onto– digital, material, emotional– and whether or not I was willing to let go of some of them as well.

Good thing I’ve got another 356 days ahead of me!

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Day 8: Listen

Posted on January 8, 2014 by joshdaddy

After two extra days of kids at home, everyone is back to their hurried morning schedules. As I suspected, it’s been a lot more of a challenge to keep it simple and take time for quiet. Still, I managed to sit this morning, and after dropping off the kids, I drove the rest of the way to work in (relative) silence.

The rest of the day, so far at least, has been a hurried mess. Ah well.

I guessed I’m destined to do “Listen” after “Stop” and “Look.”

In pre-school, my kids learned a “safety poem,” which they would recite every time we were getting ready to cross the road, encouraging them to “stop, look, and listen” as a precaution against getting run over by a speeding car.

My life seems like a speeding car, some days….

I could benefit from a little more practice with listening. Yes, the outward listening is important, and I think it goes hand in hand with a focus on creating time and space for quiet, but right now I am more interested in nurturing an inward listening.

For all the time I spend talking to myself in my head, it is startling how little time I spend listening to myself.

I’m not one to quote the Bible, but I have always appreciated that God speaks to Elijah not in the wind, or the earthquake, or the fire–but in a “still small voice.”

Then there’s Emerson:

There is guidance for each of us, and by lowly listening we shall hear the right word.

It’s only 3pm. There’s still plenty of time left in the day to stop, look, and listen.

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Day 7: Look

Posted on January 7, 2014 by joshdaddy

Irwin_EyeCleaning out my pantry and getting rid of old t-shirts is the easy stuff.

Clearing out the clutter in my mind is going to take a whole lot longer….

I am still doing my morning sitting and my quiet drive into work. What’s been apparent to me on that morning drive, though, is just how noisy my thoughts can be. I can obsess on anything and roll things over and over in my head endlessly. I mean anything–even a blog dedicated to simplifying my life! Truth is, much of this paragraph I composed in my head on the drive to work this morning. And while I was composing and recomposing sentences in my thoughts, I was completely unaware of what I was really doing at that particular moment, namely: driving a ton of metal down a busy highway surrounded by a dozen or so other vehicles…most likely  driven by equally thought-absorbed individuals.

It amazes me how much of my life I live on auto-pilot. I have so many daily, routine actions–driving to work, walking to my office, making the coffee, etc–that more often than not I am completely tuned out to my surroundings and entirely in my head.

So: today’s prompt is a tool for breaking out of my daily somnambulism and waking to the moment.

On the drive into work, when I caught myself wrapped in my thoughts, I used that moment as a cue to look at what was right in front of me.

Go ahead and try it now (I just did–took a pause from writing this post, just to observe all those things that sit around me everyday, unobserved). Look, and what do you see?

Just like focusing on breathing, taking a moment to observe what I am doing, and where I am doing it, forces me to be in the moment.

I love watching movies, and I love to watch them closely for all the details of frame and set and shot. If only I could observe my own actions and surroundings with the same degree of attention!

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Day 6: Stop

Posted on January 6, 2014 by joshdaddy

IMG_1732Today was supposed to be the first day back to school for two out of three of our kids. But a cold front has come through, with a little moisture to go with it–in Georgia, where we live, that is reason enough to cancel school, apparently.

So now I find myself with a bit of a gentle reprieve–an extra day to slow roll into our normal, frantic routine.

It’s 7:30am as I am writing this post, and the house is still silent. Even the dog and cat are sleeping in. I have started my day with quiet sitting, sipping coffee and enjoying the hush of the house. Outside my window, the sky has changed from darkness to a bright, overcast grey. The view of the leafless trees is starkly beautiful.

I have really appreciated this subtle shift in my mornings, which all started with a commitment to take time to take my time.

In a similar spirit, I thought for today’s experiment I would see if I could start finding a moment–preferably in the midst of the rush of the day–to come to a stop. Again, I’m setting the bar low here–fifteen minutes will do just fine. Even if it means just turning off the computer in my office and looking out the window, or taking a fifteen minute detour that takes me off my hurried course, that should be enough.

I will post below in comments later in the day to let you know how it goes!

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