2:79 A Lot Going On at the Moment

March 20, 2014 by twitchysister 8 Comments

Clutter buddies. Where to begin?

Beautiful readers, I’m alive! Despite my recurring nightmare in which I’m buried —  stockinged legs wiggling a la the Wicked Witch of the West Side — beneath a house comprised of pungent gym clothes; unclaimed 1098 tax forms; and a self-perpetuating loop of “urgent” emails read aloud by a sneering Mo Rocca (I still love you, Mo Rocca), here I am… mouth-breathing on account of my stymied sinuses, meditating on public transit on account of my forever-humming low grade anxiety, and gorging myself on coconut-ash and banana super dark chocolate on account of… it’s delicious. Plus pictured above: post-beach volleyball in a vintage Armani skirt, rum punch in hand, because #typical and below: dressing up like a nun amidst all of the 18% Irish sinners at the Chicago St. Patrick’s Day parade while acknowledging the inherent irony therein.

Bless this mess. Amen.

I haven’t been writing. Not really. I’ve long suffered from Overachievers Disease, and true to character, I’ve lately been too focused on squeezing extra freelance/volunteer/performance opportunities into my days to make time for Free Form Fun (FFF). I know I think I hope this degree of regimented entropy is fleeting. It has to be. Since, as you know by now, I’m not Rose as I know her if I’m not making something.

Though I’m struggling a bit at present, I’m aware of my position as a cog in the machine of faux-indispensability. When I first read Tim Kreider’s The ‘Busy’ Trap in 2012, I thought he was simultaneously a genius and a smug asshole (the Kanye of The New York Times, if you will), but I’ve come to recognize his gospel — e.g.  “if your job wasn’t performed by a cat or a boa constrictor in a Richard Scarry book I’m not sure I believe it’s necessary…” as common sense. No one will perish if I don’t hit publish; if I don’t manage to send out a press release this instant, or I deploy a typo out into the ether… Likewise, no near-victim will be resuscitated by the stellar click-through rates of my latest email campaign. Because I’m not actually that important, and pretending to be that important doesn’t save me any time or energy. Pretending to be that important doesn’t save anyone or anything at all.

Wisdom saves, though. You can trust me. I’m a nun sometimes. And anyway, I’m talking about the wisdom that comes with realizing that you are just a person and all that really matters in terms of what you do with your life is whether or not you make yourself happy. Here, I mean the work that lights up your soul and exposes all that glitters for you to the world at large; whether through collage or journaling or quality conversation.  I mean the work that you may even simultaneously take pride in and get paid for (magic). The work that doesn’t matter is the work that feels like work; the aforementioned faux-indispensability — that highly contagious, unintentionally pompous mania that you caught from another cog who was just trying to carry out another cog’s boss’s vision, and so on and so forth up and down and around the ladder. Unfortunately, not everyone is as enlightened as you, and rather than fall ill to another’s malady of delusion, you just have to hold your nose and wash your hands clean of those highly evolved mutant spores — those squirming antibodies of discontent — and keep doing your thing. Because your thing, of all things, is the thing that counts.

What’s your thing? Have you been sticking to it, or are you too bogged down in your “more pressing” matters? Newsflash, BB: nothing is more pressing than doing what you love, and doing it often.

XOXO,
Rose