A Journey Into Declutterization: Part Two
Published in The Blog.
The other day I was thinking about all the domain names I’ve owned and the futility of the entire process… Paying money for this thing that can’t possibly be maintained ad infinitum. In 2008 I had this idea for a blog called soft focus (rather: sftfcs, because I was being cute with the nomenclature) that was going to be an outlet for whatever was on my mind. Kind of like I’m doing with this space. I’d forgotten about it for a long time, but when I went searching on the Internet Archive I found a few blog posts that I wrote around that time. One was called “A Journey Into Declutterization: Part One.”
From the bits and pieces of memory I have from that period of time, this post makes a lot of sense. I was twenty-five. I had recently left rehab. (“Soft focus” was a term one of my counselors used regularly.) I was emotionally molting. It’s not surprising that I wanted to shed a lot of what I’d built up around myself to that point, and the idea of “minimalism” seemed as good a credo as any to hang my hat on as any.
Several weeks ago I’d made a note connecting the dots of George Carlin’s “A Place for My Stuff” bit and emotional minimalism. I thought this was a new thought. Turns out, I already had it about ten years earlier. I made some fine points worth carrying forward in that article, about being “dissatisfied with the way I’ve been living – continually trying to find my happiness in external stuff,” and “[upgrading] my life by downsizing and simplifying,” and “as my personal cleansing commenced it became evident that it’s a tough realization to find out that the things I once placed so much emphasis in no longer reflect what I want in life”… But there was one line that made the most sense to me, speaking of “a goal with which I can no longer identify.” Looking at those couple words and letting them rest is big.
A goal with which I can no longer identify…
Simplicity and downsizing have been on my mind lately, though the focus has been not what I’ve surrounded myself by, but what’s in my head. I was listening to this podcast that posed a process, “like decluttering my house and getting rid of stuff and simplifying my life,” instead “simplifying your heart and your attachments and your judgements.” Damn, that’s heavy.
Pivoting a little…
“It’s not that it’s bad to seek knowledge, but the idea is that if we’re just only seeking knowledge, if we’re just only looking for method, and if we’re only looking for this encyclopedic collection of technique and tools and what have you… Does the knowledge seeking enhance your knowing and harmony or wisdom…? I know a lot of people who knowledge seek as a way of weaponizing knowledge, separating themselves, [and] creating hierarchy.”
Think back to how much I’ve weaponized information for protection? Identity signaling as a defense mechanism: If you think I’m some type of person… If I think I’m some type of person… Then acceptance? Then safety? I don’t know, but it feels like I’ve armed myself with knowledge “about” a hell of a lot of stuff without really knowing much at all about any of it as a means of bridging gaps between myself and other people.
It’s weird, feeling like I’m just starting to ask questions of myself that it (now) seems like other people my age should have asked themselves long ago. Should is a dangerous word. Does staying connected to the endless torrent of information and “content” enhance my life? How much longer can I continue identity shopping before I’ll look back with regret that I never slowed down long enough to feel who I was?
This Ron Gallo song has the line, “Talking talking. Never listening. Always elsewhere. Searching searching.” From the time I wrote about declutterization when I was twenty-five, so much of my aim has been focused on a wayward target. It’s not so much about any possessions I have or haven’t amassed/divested myself of, and it’s probably not about filtering out the valuable life-affirming information from the information firehose, either. It’s not this, putting these words out into the world as if doing so “helps me process” them or relates remotely at all to any long-term resonance they’re likely to maintain within me. Simplifying isn’t about making all of this much more complicated than it needs to be in order to sort out “the answer.” It’s about none of this being up to me, whoever that might be today. It’s about letting go again.