It’s time for this year’s Dewey’s 24 Hour Readathon, and I’m so excited to be here for its 10th anniversary! Le Opening Meme: 1) What…
an owlbear who writes
Category: Blog
My anxiety is an old suit of plate armor, one that has gone unused for years, standing in a dusty museum or a forgotten corner…
“Life truly begins after you have put your house in order.” After reading this opening sentence, a younger, punk-er me would’ve put Spark Joy by Marie Kondo (aka KonMari) firmly down and gotten on with her life. The current, slightly older me accepted that the line is a good opener for a book on decluttering. The slightly older me is also better at the “buffet” approach to information. I hate mango, but I’m not going to turn my nose up at red velvet cupcakes just because they happen to sit next to the mango on the buffet table.
Besides, I knew what I was in for when I picked up Spark Joy, having read its predecessor, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up during one of my recurring minimalism phases. Sometimes, in the middle of a life dominated by deadlines, it really is soothing to sit down with a coffee and read about proper sock folding techniques. (This is not a joke. Pages 98-99.)
I like to think that I have a halfway decent handle on house organization: I know what I own, I can locate most things within a minute or two, and I know the critical masses of both chaos and order that tip my stress threshold. Still, KonMari’s book did inspire me to a couple of organization sprees, which were useful in a household still reeling from a cross-country move.
Then, as I was contemplating this blog, my mind went back to a poem by Charles Bukowski called Air and Light and Time and Space (once excellently illustrated by Zen Pencils). The poem is a dialogue between Bukowski’s narrator and an unnamed party, who recently sold a house, bought a studio and is excited about finally having “a place and the time to create.”
Boy, does Bukowski let them have it.
During the very first week of my project aimed at no-pressure blogging, I spent a long time paralyzed by indecision on what I should blog about. Well. If anything, that proves that 52 Beats should be a useful exercise for me.
The thoughts going through my head went something like:
“I should totally talk about the Marie Kondo book I’ve been reading.” – “Is that really what you want to dedicate the whole weekly post to?”
“I should talk about the Bristol Zine Fair!” – “You can describe the entire experience in two sentences.”
“How about the whole introvert thing about having time and space to myself?” – “You’ve got friends who will take that personally and assume you hate them.”
“I think I want to take my laptop to a coffeeshop and blog from there.” – “Excellent, let’s establish that as a habit.” [and then spend weeks not blogging because we didn’t manage to get out to a coffeeshop that week]
So. I’m blogging from the corner of my couch, surrounded by the strewn-around results of the organizing kick I’ve been on thanks to the Marie Kondo book and the pieces of the costume I wore to the Bristol Zine Fair, and having taken the time and space to myself is the sole reason I’m still healthy and relatively sane after two ridiculously busy weeks.
And since I can’t decide on which of the three main subjects to blog about (four if we include the perfectionistic habit-building aspect), let’s have ourselves a three-part blog this week I’m going to talk about introversion, as this was the subject most frequently on my mind during this week.
(I had intended to have a multi-part blog, but the first segment ran long enough to make me want to procrastinate on the rest, and I know where that road leads.)
I, Introvert
A couple of weeks ago, I was in the grips of a dilemma.
I recently had a rare and precious chance to get a cross-section of public opinion on my act of civil dissent, while remaining largely anonymous (i.e. “that stupid cow in the red hat”). While I’m cultivating a habit to steer clear of internet comments, I waded through this particular minefield in the name of research. Said research was quite rewarding: I found that people’s criticisms usually fell into one of three categories: (1) why aren’t you at work? (2) what is this going to achieve?; and (3) why aren’t you protesting something closer to home?
It’s N3 that I want to talk about. Not the blindingly obvious reasons why I’m protesting against Trump while I’m in the UK. But the connection between protesting and home.