Photo courtesy of morgueFile
What I learned this week has nothing to do with research because I didn’t do any research this week.
Only it does have something to do with research.
I have been “cleaning house” - throwing out trash and useless junk, giving away loads of stuff that we don’t need any more, and cleaning up (= rearranging, dusting, sweeping, scrubbing) the rest. From just the few projects and corners that I’ve tackled so far, it feels as though my mind is being reorganized as well.
And it feels good.
Stuff can be such a burden.
Not that all stuff is bad. I still love my books and CDs, for instance - especially when I can find them. Which I can now. The mind shift came in when I realized that I could put most of my CDs in one place: clothes go out of first set of drawers + stuff left from cleanup of second set of drawers goes in the empty spaces = the entire second chest of drawers left empty so that it can be used exclusively for CDs. (I would never have thought of using a chest of drawers to store CDs, but it works.)
And one of the spaces cleared in the CD move was a shelf that I really needed for storing my genealogy stuff. And that freed up floor space (yes, stuff was on the floor), which enabled me to see the bottom shelf, which was full of other genealogy stuff.
So now I can find all of my genealogy stuff.
But the benefits go beyond that: it is as though there is now starting to be more lift and less drag in my life. Less time will need to be spent on moving stuff, cleaning stuff, and putting stuff back. But even more important, some sort of mental fog seems to be lifting.
More time, fewer distractions, less chaos, more focus.
I’m not just cleaning house, I’m cleaning mind.
