Spring cleaning
Or, three things the wind blew away
Spring is the true New Year. Life returns, the wind grows fresh, and I invite its blustering through wide-open windows. It’s when I most feel the urge to clear out and clean spaces, without and within, and to set out on adventures, which are always easier when the weather is warm.
Winter was a period of healing from tragedy and dealing with my own medical struggles. I spent all of the cold season and the beginning of spring dwelling on my own mortality, trying to decipher what must be done before I’m six feet under. God willing, that won’t be for a long while, but I’ve seen enough to know I shouldn’t be heedless of the time running out.
I didn’t come up with anything extraordinary — not even travel, though I would like to. I worried for a while that I wasn’t ambitious enough, but I’m happy being a small person, living what society would call an inconsequential life. Tea parties, board games, trips to the museum, good food, digging in the dirt, loving the people I’m with, the little embodied acts of togetherness that ripple into eternity. These are what I want time for. A life lived.
I only lack these where I’m distracted, depressed, where I’ve put up walls or allowed vanity to grow and choke the parts of me that need air and nourishment. Everything I require is present in my life. I just have to clear the weeds and give them room to blossom.
So, the list I’ve made isn’t one of additions but of subtractions.
First, my phone usage.
I’ve already removed game apps, YouTube, and anything I didn’t use regularly from my phone. Now, I’m deciding how far I want to take it. A lot of people, especially creatives, are talking about minimizing phone usage, so I won’t harp on the why? — we all know why, instinctually, even if we can’t verbalize it. Determining the what? and the how much? will take experimentation and time. Are there smartphone capabilities I can’t be without, or is a phone with only talk and text (aka a dumbphone) liveable?
Second, my laptop.
I’ve been a devout typist almost as long as I can remember, but my earliest stories and poems were handwritten. As a child, I recall my pencil taking wing and flying across the page. After so many years typing, I wondered whether my written thoughts would even be coherent (that’s always a bad sign with tech if you can’t trust yourself to be human anymore). When I went looking for reasons writers prefer pen to keyboard, I found this video:
The lady who made it is an eccentric — I say this with admiration, as I hope to be an eccentric myself one day — who has devoted herself, as far as possible, to living as though it’s the late nineteenth century. I expected a talk on the pleasure and aesthetics of handwriting, but instead I got something very profound: that because I am a physical being, my relationship with my writing will improve if I allow it to exist in three-dimensional space.
This may be obvious to some, but for me it was a revelation. I’ve only just begun handwriting again, but so far I don’t miss my laptop, and I’m preparing to make a go of writing out the entire second draft of my novel. Wish me luck.
Third, my very-indoor life.
There’s a quote of Kierkegaard’s which keeps popping up this season.
Above all, do not lose your desire to walk. Everyday, I walk myself into a state of well-being & walk away from every illness. I have walked myself into my best thoughts, and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it.
I’ve felt for some time the desire to walk in nature on a regular basis, even to be in nature, to plant flowers and feed the birds, because I’ve had a sense that I would find healing there. Now, after coming through such a gloomy valley, I believe it more than ever.
Closing my eyes in these ways will serve my writing this season, both here and in my book, so expect to see them discussed in more detail. The richness of spring has me dreaming sunny fields again, and I want to make note of it, not only as a way of sharing with others, but so when I walk through the next gloomy valley, as I know I must, I can read and remember that one fine spring day the light broke through the clouds and can be counted on to do so again.
It is absolutely fascinating to see other people going on this same journey I've been on recently. There is a shift and a change happening culturally among people who know to keep their eyes open, it seems. I can answer to the phone bit -- in trying to completely break my phone addiction (I was on there for six hours a day, eek!), I went to an old flip-phone for six months (yes, where you have to press a number multiple times to change the letter from an 'A' to a 'C' :P).
While it was at times inconvenient not being able to quickly check my bank funds, or when trying to text someone back, I can say that it also led me to a great deal of peace and comfort realising that I could live without a smartphone. I now have a smartphone again, but the only apps are music, banking, texting, and calling. One of my loved ones is running it through a 'family' account designed for children, meaning I can't download new apps or anything extraneous without their 'parent account' permission. Paradoxically, these 'rules' have actually given me a lot of freedom.
A huge yes also to notebooks! That's another thing I rediscovered while reverting to a 'dumb phone' -- the joy of writing things down by hand, since I no longer had a phone to take notes on. I've found that it stimulates creativity, it helps me get unstuck when writing...there truly is value in giving your mind time to think. I haven't yet been brave enough to ban myself from my laptop while writing, but perhaps that's a step I'll fully commit to in the future!