The pleasures of being obsolete and other tiny observations on life, part I

I woke up this morning from a dream in which a friend of mine had won a horse in a drag race and somehow it was my job to transport it home for her. No useful vehicle being available, someone (without asking me) arranged for a semi truck to be delivered for my use the next morning. I kept protesting to anyone who’d listen, “I can’t drive a semi truck! I can’t drive a semi truck! I can’t drive a semi truck!”

Everyone but me seemed to think this was a trivial concern. Quitcher whining; just get in and drive the thing. How hard could it be?

Dream worlds being what they are, even I didn’t consider the greater problem — which was that we were all on one of the Samoan islands and I’d need to drive the semi truck home across the Pacific Ocean.

—–

I’ve been struck hard by a late spring-cleaning bug. When I say spring cleaning, don’t think I mean only a little feminine sweeping, polishing, and rearranging. I mean I’m driven by a mad urge to plunge into the depth of both my possessions and my life and ruthlessly purge them of both dust and clutter.

I not only crave to go through every drawer and cabinet, flinging away unused spoons, tee-shirts, gadgets, and doo-dads. (Whatever was I thinking a couple of years back when I yielded to that out-of-the-blue urge to buy so many cute teapots?)

With glee I contemplate shutting off Internet service, giving away my cellphone, and even selling off the XTerra — anything, anything to simplify. To declutter. To create clean, new spaces in my brain. (Never mind that I have past experience doing without both Internet and cars and I know it merely creates a different form of complication and clutter in life.)

Simplify, simplify, simplify, as Thoreau said.

Simplify, as Wendy McElroy corrects him.

If you’ve been around a while, you know I get this way now and then.

Yesterday I should have been working on a BHM article. Or two. Instead, I attacked the kitchen in a sweaty frenzy. I succeeded in moving much of the clutter from here, where it crowds shelves and counters, to there, where it’ll be boxed up to go to a charity garage sale. I have at least a week’s worth of this sort of thing ahead of me, but reality yanks me back.

Must. Earn. Living.

NO! NO! Must. Clear. Clutter!

Must. Earn. Living.

NO! NO! Can’t earn living until house and brain have been thoroughly scrubbed!

I suspect this was what caused my sleepy brain to produce that semi truck I needed to learn to drive over the ocean.

—–

Ahem.

One thing I’m grateful for is that I’m at a point where I’ve created choices for conducting life as I want to conduct it.

So much of life, earlier, was about fulfilling other people’s needs. Writing their promotional materials. Attending their meetings. Caring about their opinions. Cleaning spaces that others messed up. Tending to someone else’s emotional ups and downs. Attending events in which I had no interest. Trying to sort out lies from truths, and sort out other people’s truths from my own truths (while sometimes not really knowing what my own truths might be). Even though I admit I was never one of those hyper-caretaking, self-denying women, too much of life was for or about Somebody Else.

You could say, of course, that it was still for me because I made the choices that put me in those circumstances. True, somewhat. I had to work for others to survive — but also to find out what worked and what didn’t, to develop skills, to gain all those insights you only gain by engaging with messy reality. I had to be in less-than-ideal relationships to learn how much I’m willing to give, which people I most need to avoid, and how very, very much I appreciate solitude.

But now — although reality, with its eternal need for earning a living, raises its ugly head now and then frequently — life is much more My Way. Sans meetings. Sans conference calls. Sans appointments. Blessedly sans Other People’s Dramas.

I worked hard to set things up this way. It took years and mostly involved failing and failing and failing to set firm enough boundaries — until I finally learned that sometimes I just plain have to be “unreasonable” and willing to disappoint perfectly good people in order to preserve the life I value.

Because it was so hard to get here, I can be extra fierce and protective when someone or something tries to claim a piece of me. Sometimes, still, I am not fierce enough. And then I have to rebuild little sections of my personal barriers. I groan, “Oh, you’ve gone and done it again.” And I haul out the bricks and mortar of self-determination and cuss as I labor.

But it’s worth it. There are only so many more full moons to see rising in the early evening sky. Only so many warm summer days to enjoy. Only so many more walks in the woods with Robbie and Ava.

—–

Part II should be wandering along here in the next few days. It’s the part about how nice it can be (though also alarming) to be obsolete.