I went backpacking this weekend, for the first time in two years, and it gave me ample opportunity to think about minimalism, fitness, frugality, and other such preoccupations. How do we spend our time? Do we engage in our favorite activities as often as we do other, less interesting things? How often do we see our favorite people? What stops us? What proportion of our possessions relate to our passions? Seeing an old friend who lives far away is one of life’s greatest treasures. Almost everyone I love lives at least a few hundred miles away, many of them at least a thousand. Anyone who is reading this who has friends in the same city, please pause for a moment and feel grateful. I am so jelly you can put me on toast and then drop me on the floor, and my dog will think it is his birthday. We need to focus more on seeing each other face to face and being together without electronic intervention. We forget what it’s like to be part of a group of humans who are making eye contact, speaking to one another, and sharing an experience, live, in real time. They say we get more value out of experiences than things. I suspect that a fairly large segment of the population would not agree, because many of us spend more time interacting with our stuff than we do going out and acquiring worthwhile experiences. Almost everyone has an interest in something such as travel, painting, building a treehouse, or playing a musical instrument. Sadly, many of us just quit these activities at some point, if we ever attempt them at all. Decades will pass without a single dance step or sketch or song. There doesn’t seem to be any kind of internal meter that chimes to remind us: “It has now been two years since you last engaged in one of your top three favorite things.” Where does the time go? The nice thing about the passing of time is that sometimes Present Self is doing much better than Past Self was. I put on my pack and realized that I had to cinch the waist belt tighter. That surprised me. Then I remembered that the last time I went hiking, I was at least 20 pounds heavier. I also hadn’t run my marathon yet. I wore the souvenir shirt from my marathon on the hike, and got to meet two other women who ran the same race! I have only recently started working out again, so it was delightful to discover that my ankle is finally fully healed. Even after spending nearly a year sitting around feeling sorry for myself, I still had a high enough fitness level to hike 14 miles and handle a 4000’ elevation gain. There truly are no physical objects as valuable as that sense of pride and accomplishment. There are no material items that can compare in any way to the beauty and richness of the natural world in its wild state. As for stuff, well, there is a base level of stuff required for survival. Add a layer on top of that for comfort, and another layer for luxury. Backpacking can be quite instructive as to what gear falls into which category. Spend a night outdoors in below-freezing temperatures, and remember how utterly amazing your mattress and pillow and sheets and blankets are. Spend a weekend wearing only the clothing options you can carry on your back, and develop an entirely new perspective on the extensive wardrobe in your closet. Tear a hole in your shoe and understand the nuanced difference between a tightwad and a skinflint. (A tightwad gets the full lifetime out of a pair of shoes; a skinflint wears them an additional year after that). Lose your lip balm and realize it may be the single most important possession you have ever had. I gained some XP just from observing the other adventurers in my party. I take a lot of pride in my pack, and my ability to carry my own tent, stove, pots, water pump, first aid kit, etc. I had this idea that I was doing fairly well, considering my relatively small size and proportionally small backpack. My friends’ packs were noticeably smaller than mine, and I wondered, were they forgetting anything? Then we set up camp. Out came: a chair, a shovel, a bear canister, a lantern, a stuffed teddy bear, a foot pump, a camera tripod… What was next, I wondered, a kayak? WHERE ON EARTH WERE THEY PUTTING EVERYTHING? It was like Mary Poppins and her carpet bag. It turns out that technology has come a long way when it comes to lightweight gear, performance fabrics, compression sacks, and other such marvels. What I have is the camping equivalent of one of those foot-long cellular phones with an antenna. I have been driving a metaphorical Yugo. After replacing my blown-out trail shoes, my next task is to reallocate part of my budget from my out-of-control cookbook habit to something that is more valuable to me, namely, my physical ability to haul camping gear up a hill. Minimalism is all about making sure our attention matches our intention. We should be spending the majority of our time with the people we care about the most, doing the things that are most important to us. Our possessions and personal environment should support that focus. We need space for our friends, just like we need space for privacy and projects, yet our stuff can often spread until stuff is all there is. Backpacking is my personal way of reminding myself what my real priorities are. I come home to my husband, my critters, and my big fluffy pillow, and appreciate our home and our life together all the more.
The ritual began under a full moon. We dressed in our finest evening clothes. I wore a white brocade evening gown with rhinestone straps, silver strappy heels, and vintage earrings. He wore a suit and tie. We walked out onto the back lawn, feeling the tingle of anticipation. The glow of city lights shone far in the distance, nothing but evergreen treetops filling the valley in between. We took deep breaths and began to shout. “COME ON, MONEY!” We jumped up and down. We waved our arms, as if beckoning a child to jump into a swimming pool. “MONEY! HERE I AM! I’M READY!” When we felt we had made our point, we went back inside and drank some champagne. There were two realities that night. One was the surface reality, in which two elegantly dressed people enjoyed a million-dollar view from a 3800-square-foot house while drinking glasses of bubbly. The other was the secret reality, in which both parties were drowning in debt and no income was coming in. The evening gown and the earrings came from Goodwill, and the “Champagne” was really sparkling wine from Costco. A decade later, one party is doing quite well and the other, probably not quite so well. This is a story about scarcity and abundance, fantasy and reality. Mine is a Cinderella story. I was a poor kid. I didn’t get to college until my late 20s, and I cleaned a lot of houses to work my way through. When I met my current husband, I was wearing thrift store clothes and sleeping on a patched air mattress in a rented room. He fell for me the day I threw a shoe at him, hitting him in the sternum quite soundly. He carried me away to live comfortably in the suburbs. I’ve gone to bed hungry plenty of times, cried myself to sleep over bills I couldn’t pay, and walked several miles at a stretch when I couldn’t swing a $1.50 bus ticket. I’ve also slept in five-star hotels, dined in Zagat-rated restaurants, and flown business class. (Not first class, not yet anyway). I’ve seen enough of the world to know that the sense of scarcity or abundance, fear or magnanimity, has little to do with actual material resources. Plenty of rich people are freaked about money all the time, and plenty of happy people have little or no money to speak of. Money is awesome, though, I can tell you that. I freaking love money and I can’t wait to get more of it. It is SO USEFUL. I want lots of it and I hope you get a lot, too. Sounds terrible, doesn’t it? Why is that? They say love of money is the root of all evil. I disagree. I think selfishness is the root of most evil. Money can make people act weird, but when there’s plenty to go around, well, it’s relaxing. My dog and my parrot are good friends because they both have always had plenty to eat. A couple of days of empty bowls and it would all be over. That will never be a problem, though. They don’t have to worry about having enough to eat because I don’t have to worry about the price of pet food. That’s because when it comes down to it, they really need very little to keep going. At our house, the priority is on being together. Pet food is an incidental and relatively trivial line item. Scarcity is constant fear and anxiety. I used to dream about plates of steaming hot food when I was a little girl. Usually it was breakfast: scrambled eggs, toast with jam, sausage, and hash browns, with a glass of orange juice on the side. The dream would be so vivid I could smell it. I would startle awake, terrified I was going to jostle the plate and spill everything. No such plate ever appeared. Hunger gnaws at the mind at least as much as the belly. It took me decades to start shaking loose that fear of missing meals or not getting enough to eat. It also took me years to be able to swipe my debit card at the grocery store without cringing, thinking the payment would not be approved, even when I knew full well that I had plenty of money in the bank. I still hide cash in various places, for what reason I’m not sure. I was afraid to sign the lease on my first apartment, fearing I would get laid off and be stuck for months with no income. I was just as afraid when I signed the lease on my first house, for the same reason. It never happened. That sense of dread about bad financial outcomes has never helped me to get better jobs, earn more money, or enjoy life. It is far easier to earn more than it is to save more. There is no upper income limit, but even the most frugal person can only cut back to zero dollars. I know how it’s done; I could start living on the barter system tomorrow, if I liked. There are a lot of people who would be delighted to trade me room and board for my housekeeping services alone; that was true even before I learned to cook. Why stop there, though? I have a lot more to offer than my ability to sew buttons, scrub bathtubs, and entertain young children. These are not negligible offerings to the world; the trouble comes when poverty makes them feel like a burden instead of a love gift. Poverty destroys focus. Scarcity generates more scarcity; it spreads like mold. Abundance spreads like light, from the first flickering candle to the bright glare of full sun. The best things in life are free. It’s a cliché because it’s 100% true. Hugs, laughter, nature, creating artwork, conversation, being with friends and loved ones, dancing, singing – none of that stuff costs a nickel. Whether we allow ourselves to enjoy any of it depends entirely on attitude. Abundance is the secure knowledge that there is plenty and more on its way. The abundance mentality focuses on getting maximum value out of experiences and things. This by no means requires diamonds or grand pianos or yachts. It just requires appreciation and gratitude. The other things are available, though, and they are legitimate. Grand pianos are made to be played. Yachts create a lot of jobs. Diamonds? Okay, there are a lot of political ramifications around diamonds (and I don’t own any, and never have). But it doesn’t have to be that way; there is no practical reason why diamonds can’t be gotten ethically through fair trade. True abundance includes the ready sense that everyone in the world could indeed have access to food, education, sanitation, and basic human rights. As a starting point. The point of the “COME ON, MONEY!” ritual was to embrace a sense of possibility. Money is simply energy. It’s a symbol. It’s a convenient way to transfer value. It is inherently neutral. I’m ready to be a billionaire; I’d be darned good at it. I would get rolling on philanthropic projects the very second day, after I filled a claw-foot bathtub with $100 bills and had my picture taken in it. I’d start with homelessness in my region and move on to literacy programs after that. Come to think of it, I don’t need a billion dollars to do those things, but you already knew that, right? Abundance is about knowing what to do with prosperity when it shows up. Outrageous dreams – do you have them? What are they? Do they indeed cost actual cash dollars, or could they come true the moment the wish was formed? Money is a shortcut. It solves problems quickly that can also be solved slowly through other means. Money is a tool. It gets things done. Money is leverage. It creates scenarios that enable the creation of other scenarios. We don’t need money to make great things happen. It really helps, though, to change our perceptions of what money is and what it does. It helps us learn possibility thinking, even when all we have previously known was naysaying and scarcity. This world was made for us to use and enjoy, and we were made for this world to use and enjoy as well. We are here for our own specific purposes, none of which can be fulfilled when we remain stuck in anxiety and blocked energy. There are certain things I’ll never do. I’ll never go BASE jumping. I’ll never go to the Moon. I’ll never smoke a cigar. This is because I want to not do these things. It’s good to know; it means I don’t waste time trying to decide how to spend my time among millions of possible options. I focus on what I do want to do, like seeing fireflies one day. The other thing is that I’ll only be able to do the things I want to do when my intentions are clear. I need to act on my intentions, and I need to plan those actions, or the things I want in my life will never happen. There is a trick to this. I know I want to see fireflies, and I know they are harmless and that it will be fun for me. Maybe romantic even. If I can come up with a (second) solid reason to go to a place where fireflies live, at the right time of year, it’s almost certain to happen. Why wouldn’t it? I can probably just go to a free public park one evening and there they will be. The only way I can mess it up is by trying to take a bunch of pictures and getting frustrated when they don’t turn out. What do I do, though, when I have an intention that may not be fun, cheap, or effortless? What if I keep claiming I’m going to do something and not putting any effort behind that claim? They call it ‘procrastination’ – which is Latin for ‘wasting your precious life.’ We need to accept the facts and admit the truth to ourselves. I’m never going to go to the doctor about this. I have no intention of saving money for my retirement. I don’t even think I’m going to live that long, and that’s Plan A. I’m never going to lose weight. I’m never going to set foot in a gym. I’m never going back to school. I’m never going to write my book. I’m never going to clear out my storage unit. In fact, I’m never going to clean my bathroom or have all my clothes washed at the same time, either. I’m never going to quit drinking soda. I’m never going to quit smoking or drinking alcohol. I’m never going to stop yelling at my kids. I’m never going to stop being angry at my spouse. I’m never going to forgive That Person. I’m never getting off this medication or this CPAP and I’m certainly never going to make any of the lifestyle adjustments the doctor wants me to make. I’m going to my grave with unfinished business. I’ll die in debt. Other people can tie up my loose ends and clean up after me. This is MY LIFE and it’s mine to mess up as I choose. I don’t WANT to be my best self, and nobody can make me. I choose this. I choose this body and this living environment and these situations. Every day I have left is going to be just like this, except for when it gets worse, and I’m fine with that. Things changed for me when I realized that everything I was doing was my personal Default Mode. I went to my default job on my default commute. I wore my default clothes and my default hair. I ate my default food. I slept on my default schedule. I read my default books and I wrote in my journal about my default feelings and I had many default conversations. I thought my default thoughts. I wasn’t particularly in favor of any of these default modes. What were they, factory settings? Could I get an upgrade? Was I missing an instruction manual? I spent a few days journaling about the objective reality of my life, which felt miserable to the core, and decided to make an effort to improve everything I could. I started doing some research and experimenting with my life. It turned out that my default modes were not fixed after all. I was fully configurable. I paid off my debts, fixed my sleep issues, changed my diet, got fit, changed my wardrobe, and burned all my old journals. I adopted some new philosophical positions about living intentionally and being emotionally present for others. Lo and behold, every part of my life that had caused me (and perhaps others) such misery is now completely different. I don’t particularly hold to this idea that we create our own reality. Say that with a straight face to a tsunami survivor. It makes no sense. The truth is that we are pawns of fate as well as creators of our own destinies. We may very well be living out the consequences of natural disasters or other people’s actions. We do still have the power to choose our own attitudes, which thoughts deserve our continued focus, and how we react to and express our emotions. We have the power to set boundaries and form intentions. Those are absolute powers. We also have virtually unlimited power to choose our actions, our associates, and our personal environments. When we fail to realize these powers, our lives are determined by entropy; by reaction instead of action, by external instead of internal forces, by others instead of ourselves. We float in a formless void, lacking inspiration, drive, or initiative. We become like the unborn. It is our birthright to shape our own destinies using the full extent of our abilities. We must set intentions to truly live. Once I told my grandmother, “Nana, I still have every single card you ever sent me.” She was great that way. She never missed a birthday, and she also sent cards for Valentine’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day, Easter, Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. I might be missing a holiday or two. I was 21, and I thought she’d be impressed by how much her thoughtful notes (and cash) had meant to me throughout my childhood. She said, “WHY?! Throw that stuff away!” I took her advice, and I let it all go. Most of my sentimental items made of paper had gotten musty and mildewed due to being in storage for years. I burned a pile of old cards and letters. One night I burned my yearbooks and my first wedding album. A different night, I burned my journals from ages 9 to 32. It takes hours. Several of my friends were aghast at my decision. They tried their best to convince me to wait, or not do it at all, because there’s no turning back from such a drastic decision. Once something is burned, there’s no way of getting it back, in the way that I’ve seen so many (read: all) of my clients retrieve things from the recycle, trash, or donation bags. The decision to get rid of a sentimental item is permanent. Regret is one of the strongest, least pleasant emotions. Other strong emotions that are aroused during the clutter clearing process are sorrow, grief, remorse, guilt, shame, anger, hatred, nostalgia, envy, bitterness, avarice, wistfulness, loneliness, and disgust. This process can also lead to a lot of confusion, overwhelm, and acute anxiety. It really helps to acknowledge these feelings while doing the work. In my opinion, the emotional work IS the work. It’s the entire point of the process. Clutter holds us back partly because it feeds on itself and causes its own recursive complications. Mostly, though, it’s merely a physical reflection of the inner world. We displace our emotions and delayed decisions into our stuff. Some examples of this are unplayed musical instruments, unopened books, and unused fitness equipment. Other examples are the relics and artifacts of an emotional journey. Photographs, letters, journals, memorabilia, and souvenirs – things with no resale value or inherent interest to anyone else – are by far the hardest to let go. They are too personal to have much significance to anyone else, but so personal that we are confounded by them. I’ve seen it all. Photo albums, every possible baby or pet accoutrement, trinkets from dead romances, dried flowers, veils, ribbons, trophies, buttons, bumper stickers, tickets, event programs, posters, game tokens, certificates, report cards, mix tapes, engraved keepsakes, jewelry, teeth, kidney stones, bags of pet hair, cremains… You name it. If it can be personalized or monogrammed, so much the better. It’s like so many barnacles or strangling tendrils of ivy or tentacles. I was always a saver as a child. I saved my bubble gum wrappers, and ordinary gray rocks, and movie ticket stubs, and pamphlets and brochures, and receipts, and buttons and washers and screws I found in the street, and essentially any physical object I could conceivably claim as mine. Things had mystical powers and properties. I had a collection of marbles that had individual personalities. I saw the backstory of everything. It was easier to interact quietly with these fascinating objects than it was to interact with people. Gradually, through many years of reading and journaling and working through my own collection of material possessions, I started thinking and feeling differently about my stuff. I started to realize that almost all of the emotions raised by my things were dark. Most of my stuff gave me bad feelings. Some of those simply included my possessiveness, materialism, desire for acquisition, reluctance to let other people touch or use my things, severe anxiety whenever anything got broken or ruined, and compulsion to maintain and store my things even when I truly couldn’t afford to do so. Other emotions were just sad and painful, such as the feelings raised by rereading old love letters that had led to bad breakups. Part of what helped me start to let go was to change my stories: to rework my interpretation of what had happened with that person or in that scenario. Changing the story helps let go of the stuff, but conversely, letting go of the stuff helps change the story. For example, I’ll never forget the feeling of holding hands with my Nana. She had the softest skin. I always felt so loved by her. I still remember the sound of her voice, speaking and singing. I can picture her so clearly. I remember her favorite outfits and jewelry and her trademark hairstyle. I can picture myself in every room of her house, sitting with her, playing Scrabble or watching musicals. Those potent sense memories have never faded, in spite of the fact that I got rid of all those cards she sent. I don’t have any of her jewelry or framed photos or dishes or furniture, although I probably could have. What I do have is her folding sewing scissors from her work bag. I use them almost every day, and I always think of her. If I ever lose the scissors, I’ll still think of her. She was more than the sum of my memories, and my memories are more than any particular object or thing she once touched. I’ve reached a point where the very existence of an object with strong emotional associations automatically goes on my hit list. I have to preemptively work on my attachment to it. If ever there is a house fire, earthquake, landslide, flash flood, burglary, or disaster of any kind, I have to assume that the thing I care about the most is going to be the first thing to get ruined. I’ve had several heirlooms that were smashed, cracked, gouged, or stained by professional movers, while my $1 generic drinking glasses have survived half a dozen moves unscathed. Some of my irreplaceable paper notes have been crumpled, smudged, or misplaced for significant periods of time. I’ve had to accept that it is my fate to be a nomad, and that this means living lightly. I’m extremely fortunate that my family, friends, pets, and of course my husband are intact and doing well. In that context, who cares about the occasional notebook or teapot? It’s just stuff. It’s Past Self’s stuff. I’ve been presented with family legacy items several times, and passed on almost all of them. I have to assume that future generations will be equally unmoved by my own estate. That would inevitably be true even if I had children of my own, but I don’t, and there is no reason to think my nephews or niece will one day be interested in my lock of baby hair. When I’m 80, they’ll be closing in on retirement age themselves. I have a history degree, and you can trust me on this: almost none of us have any artifacts or archival items that would be of use to a museum or library. Once we’ve given some thought to our relative significance to posterity (or lack thereof), we need only consider what role these sentimental items play for us, for our personal needs. Most likely, it’s holding us back in some way. It’s waiting for unguarded moments when it can poleaxe us in our vulnerability. It’s lurking, ready to drag us into depression and keep us stuck in the past. It’s at its best when that past is unpleasant and unprocessed. It hypnotizes us into facing backward, when we could be looking forward, creating a more desirable future. It’s ballast, dragging us down, preventing liftoff, sometimes pulling us under until we founder. It trains us to fuss and worry and sort and stack and schlep. We believe we won’t survive its loss, that our very souls are stored in it somewhere, somehow. We can’t imagine the horrors of leaving it behind and moving on without it. A box of papers becomes an abandoned baby or betrayed puppy. We give it spiritual charisma and heft and resonance. I’m here to tell you: It’s just stuff. Stuff is not memories. Stuff is not relationships. Stuff is not a personality. Stuff is not a past. Stuff is not history. Stuff is not a legacy. It’s just stuff. All those other things live in the abstract. They are meta-stuff. It’s perfectly safe to detach from them and get some emotional distance. Some might even call it freedom. On my recent wedding anniversary, I posted photos of us dressed up for a night on the town. I have a terrible crush on this man I call my husband, and when I saw him in a fedora for the first time, I couldn’t take my eyes off him. Devastating. If he’d worn a hat like that the day we met, I would have been too nervous to talk to him. I felt the same way the day he came home with reading glasses for the first time. He kept catching me staring at him and got really embarrassed. Hey, it’s my prerogative to find my mate attractive. I’m proud he’s mine and I like showing the world what I see in him. One of my friends commented on my photo about my being the anniversary gift for my husband. That was a very thoughtful compliment. It got me thinking, though, about how many layers there are underpinning that idea. I agree completely; I do see my fit physique as a gift to my mate, among many other things, and it’s something we’ve discussed for years. I also fully realize that this concept is anathema to most women, and it deserves some explanation. Let me begin by spelling out that there are some very unsavory connotations behind the idea of the body as gift. Slavery, women as chattel, and the ancient tribal-level virginity fetish – oogy, icky stuff. It’s not a gift if it’s not yours to give. It’s not a gift if it’s compelled or if it’s felt as an obligation. I get this. Nobody owns me. I’m a free elf. My body belongs to me, or rather, I don’t see my body as a separate entity from my personality or spirit or mind or what-have-you. I’ve lived so many different physical manifestations, and felt their effects on my mood and mental state, that to me the two are inextricably intertwined. I hear a great deal of commentary expressing that “my body wants” this or that (usually involving frosting), and it seems surreal and weird to me that people think of their bodies as some kind of hostile, enemy force preventing them from doing what they want. When I’m happy and thriving, my external appearance is muscular and vigorous, with pink cheeks, bright eyes, and good posture. When I’m not doing well, my external appearance includes dark circles under the eyes, slouching, and trudging. Which causes which? It doesn’t really matter. The key factor is to recognize when I’m off track and starting to spiral into negativity, both physical and spiritual. One gift I can offer is to practice basic self-care and emotional hygiene. Being healthy and feeling great is good for me, and it also makes it easier to be around me. My attitude is always fully within my control, and it has everything to do with getting along and being a good partner. There is a prevailing attitude among a certain segment of the female population that anyone who finds slender women more attractive is a terrible human being. Everything about falling in love, dating, and forming a lasting partnership is boiled down to appearance and body fat level. This is patronizing. It’s also wrong. At least three of the men I’ve dated made it clear that they preferred my appearance when I was seven clothing sizes bigger. I would estimate that about 80% of straight men love the women in their lives regardless of size. They just like being around us and smelling our hair and having someone to keep them warm at night. They truly don’t care what shoes or clothes we wear, or whether we wear makeup or shave our legs; whatever makes us happy is fine with them. Ask around. Guys are pretty open about this stuff, and they’ll generally give an honest answer to a sincere question. A man wants a woman who likes him, who wants to be with him, who smiles and laughs a lot and shows her happiness. That’s the perfect woman. The other problem with the “I’d rather be alone than be with a man who thinks I need to lose weight” attitude is that it diverts focus from other factors that might repel even those who prefer a curvy, queen-sized physique. What if the body looks great to him, but he is put off by the defensiveness, resentment, bitterness, and fixation on sniffing out body-shaming under every rock and stone? Fully two-thirds of American women are overweight or obese now, and it’s 72% for men. Overweight is normal now. It’s fairly common for men to actively shy away from what they perceive to be “high maintenance” women, the signifiers of whom are thinness, fashionable clothing, and high-gloss hair, makeup, and manicures. The older a man becomes over age 30, the more likely he is to seek frugality in a mate, and test for whether a potential partner is in debt or is a recreational shopper. Another factor that is a common dealbreaker is the desire to have children immediately, or refusal to allow a new mate to assert parental authority over her pre-existing children. None of these things have anything to do with weight or body type. They have to do with personal autonomy and independence, which are perfectly fine for a single person, but are qualities that might be better traded for flexibility and generosity in loving relationships. My husband and I were both fat when we met. We became close friends, which we still are, but we didn’t start feeling physically attracted to each other until we had both lost about 30 pounds. Losing weight was something I did for myself. I like it better. I like being fit, and I LOVE not having migraines or night terrors or fibromyalgia symptoms. I also see my commitment to self-care as a gift to him. I know he thought I was pretty when I was heavier, and I know he finds me more attractive as a marathon runner. Sometimes this makes me a little sad for Past Self, that we didn’t get our act together sooner. Mostly, I like that my transition to athleticism has brought us closer together. We have more in common now. He’s excited by my accomplishments and quite interested in my running routes and training schedules. Some of my gifts to him include working on my character flaws, developing my talents and interests, and becoming my better self. These are gifts because I choose them freely and offer them with my whole heart. This is the man I love. I’d donate my kidney or my bone marrow or my blood plasma to him, if the need ever came, and I’d be glad to do it. Why then wouldn’t I give of my physical essence? Why would I not offer up my sweat and effort and self-discipline? I share my body with him in the same way I share my heart, my thoughts, and all the days of my life. 40 isn’t what it used to be. It used to be a milestone that represented the end of youth. None of the biological factors involved in the scariness of 40 are tied to chronological age anymore. People over 40 are having babies and running marathons. Between breast implants, hair implants, and tooth bleaching, it can be hard to tell how old someone is. All that’s left for my fellow citizens of Los Angeles County is a way to get rid of liver spots, and we’re golden. I’m freaking out over turning 40 today because it’s the turning of a decade. My odometer is rolling. I get wound up over New Year’s Eve in much the same way. Strategic review should happen on a regular basis; otherwise, all we get is entropy, happenstance, and unintentional outcomes. Very few excellent things happen by accident. They do – leave room for serendipity – but almost everything that is really awesome is the outcome of planning, focus, and concentrated effort. Most of it also takes significant time investment over the long term. When I was 10, I thought sugar would solve all my problems. The only things I really wanted out of life were cartoons, pizza, privacy, and my own unicorn. I thought I was going to be an architect. When I was 20, I thought romance would solve all my problems. The only things I really wanted out of life were true love, a more interesting job, and a better apartment. I thought I was going to teach ESL overseas. When I was 30, I thought money would solve all my problems. The only things I really wanted out of life were financial independence and to go paperless. I thought I was going to be a civil servant. Now I’m turning 40 and I know money will solve all my problems! I can have everything I ever wanted at age 10, and I basically do have everything I ever wanted at 20 and 30, except the financial independence part. I probably won’t be an architect, unless I build my own tiny house one day, but I could go and teach English or work as a civil servant next week if I like. I’ve reached a place where yearning and fantasizing about the future isn’t so much a mental escape as a possible to-do list. One of the benefits of age is competence. As we get older and more experienced, we understand how to go about doing things. Problems that laid us flat when we were young are routine and obvious now. We know when to look for a better job, when to end relationships, when to go home and go to bed, when we’ve overdone it. We have resumes full of practical skills, from soothing a crying baby to hosting Thanksgiving to planning weddings. We have a solid sense of how long things take, how much they cost, and who is likely to show up. The thing is that time is running out. The sands are pouring through the hourglass. At 40, we know there is a limited window of opportunity to do the things we “always wanted” that we thought we’d have a million years to do when we were young. I always wanted to have flat abs. I’ve had flat abs since last year, and I admire them every morning. I always wanted to have time to cook a hot breakfast every morning. Now I do. I always wanted to have a newspaper column. I decided to write a blog instead. I always wanted to run a marathon. I did. I always wanted to learn a foreign language. Now I can mostly read the news in German and French. I always wanted to be a birdwatcher. Of all things. Now I add a few birds to my life list every year. I never particularly wanted to be a rock star or a model or a professional athlete. As it happens, I have sung in front of a crowd that held up their lighters for me and I once earned $80 as a plus-size runway model. Life is weird. Next thing I know, I’ll be getting paid to participate in a sporting event. The thing about planning is not so much to lock ourselves into a rigid sense of How Things Ought to Be, but simply to steer in a desirable direction. We want to leave room for the fascinating interludes that make for the best stories. What we don’t want to do is to let the years slip past, one day like the next, until our time is gone and it’s too late to do the things we always wanted to do. We know neither the day nor the hour. I intend to make the most of the time I have before me anyway. I’m planning to see the Northern Lights, for starters. I want to look back on my 50th birthday and feel that the decade from 2015-2025 was at least as amazing as the one from 2005-2015. One fine day, my husband took me out in a rowboat. It was a beautiful summer morning, and he rowed me all around the lake, into every stand of reeds my heart desired. I was on the hunt for the feral Mandarin Ducks that several birding websites claimed were there. We were relocating out of the area, and this was really our last chance to spot the birds. What I wish I’d known was that only one individual duck occasionally appeared on this lake, that we never would see him, and that we would have been better off spending more time saying goodbye to our friends. That’s the thing about rowboats. You face backward while moving forward. That’s also the thing about life. I’ve spent years of my life looking backward, processing events and relationships and trying to figure out how things could have gone differently. This has taught me a lot. In other ways, though, it’s like thinking of the snappy comeback the day after the conversation that needed it. That comeback isn’t going to make sense or be funny in any other context. If I was talking to a close friend, I could just drop everything and send it by text, and the laugh riot would continue. It’s when our feelings get hurt that we can’t let go, that we keep mentally trying to get the last word. Those are the past events that we dwell on, too. I’m turning 40 tomorrow, and I’m using the time to do an extended life review and strategic planning session. It’s my time to shut the door on the past, like the time I burned the instant mashed potatoes, my divorce, some misguided wardrobe choices, and that night I lost $38 at the nickel slots. I can save a few Throwback Thursday moments (not as many as I’d like) and forgive Past Self for being so young and stubborn all the time. I wouldn’t be where I am without the choices I made, both good and ill, and I accept that. I’m pulling my rowboat up to shore and climbing out. How do we travel forward facing into the future? Are we in a car driving up the freeway? Are we on a locomotive? A cruise liner? A sailboat? An airplane? A hot air balloon? A space shuttle? Either we choose it for ourselves, or we only figure it out in retrospect. Right now, I like the thought of a tandem bicycle, pedaling along on the scenic route, with a picnic hamper strapped on the back. What I’m supposed to write is an exposé about how reaching major goals isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. I’m supposed to feel nostalgic for Past Self. Maintenance is supposed to be this total pain in the neck that isn’t really worth it. I know it but I can’t write any of that. My experience is that life is easier in the “after” photo. The more I have succeeded in reaching goals and eliminating persistent problems, the more I have realized that the same skills can be applied in different areas of life, and that it is indeed worth every effort to do so. This is most obvious when it comes to eliminating debt. When I graduated from college (a few months before the photo on the left was taken), I had two separate student loans, two maxed-out credit cards, an overdraft I didn’t even understand, and some small personal debts. Then I added a car loan. For the first several months, every time I would make a payment on my student loan, the balance would increase, and I would cry. There was a period of time when I had maybe $30 a month of discretionary income. That was my lever to try to get out from under the snowballing consumer debt. It felt like it would never end. I checked all my balances every day, picked up pennies off the sidewalk and deposited them in my checking account, read the entire personal finance section at the public library, and continued to do odd jobs cleaning houses and babysitting. Fortunately, I also continued to demonstrate hustle at my day job, and I got some raises and promotions. I’ve been free of consumer debt for several years now. I paid off my Perkins Loan six years early. I still owe $7000 on my main student loan, and I never stop thinking about it. Mainly, though, I enjoy swiping my debit card at the grocery store and knowing that the payment will go through. The freedom from constant financial stress is fabulous. I think my shoulders have dropped two inches. That would be a great before/after photo opportunity: ‘Before’ with the dark circles under the eyes and the forehead creases. ‘After’ with shoulders back and head held high. Getting organized is another area where ‘after’ is so much better, I’m not even capable of going back to ‘before.’ I had chronic disorganization problems from grade school through my early 30s. I was late for everything. I lost stuff, including gloves, scarves, hats, wallets, day planners, my ID and debit cards, and even a library book once or twice. There was always a pile of unsorted, unopened mail on my desk, and probably more in my backpack. My closet was full of unfinished craft projects. I wouldn’t have considered it that way at the time, but I was unreliable. The struggle was real. I kept a fairly clean house, but the bureaucratic machinery of my life smelled like burning rubber and had springs flying out. It took a long time, and dozens of books on organization, but I finally learned how to manage the details. I sleep better. It seems counterintuitive, but I spent probably 5x as much mental strain worrying before I got organized than I do now. Does peace of mind show up in photos? Controversially, the most dramatic change in my before/after photo would be the physical differences. I’ve lost 35 pounds from my top weight. I ran my first marathon about six weeks after I took the photo on the right. I look better as a fit person, even though I’m 10 years older. This is mostly because being heavy made me physically miserable. I had thyroid disease, chronic pain, and migraines, and my sleep disorder ran my life. My ‘after’ photo includes so many changes, from better posture to muscle, and I’ve traded from dark circles to having color in my face. Maintaining my food log every day takes about two minutes. Being overweight and ill took up about 98% of my time and attention. Maybe other people prefer being [choose favorite euphemism for excess adipose tissue], but their experience must not have included anything that was a part of my experience. Nobody goes around claiming that “Headachy girls are better than thin girls.” My before/after picture is about bummer/happy, exhausted/rested, cruddy/high energy. If I made two lists, of Past Self’s typical daily actions and the stuff I do differently now, Past Self would freak. It would have looked terrifying and not fun. Past Self would most likely go off on a rant about what kind of crazy person would waste their life doing all that stuff. It wouldn’t have worked if I’d tried to make every single change all at once. What happened was that I would make a small change, it would work out well, and then later I would make another small change. Year after year, the effects of those small changes added up, giving me more time and energy to focus on other areas. I changed from broke, scatterbrained, and fatigued to solvent, productive, and fit. I still like to think of myself as the ‘before’ and wonder what the next ‘after’ will look like. This week I’m writing about turning 40. There’s no way of knowing – I could die five minutes from now – but it always made sense to me to live as though I would reach an advanced age. (As I wrote those words, a bald gentleman walked in, shoulders back, combing his long white beard). I always thought the risk of spending part of today thinking about the future was a better value proposition than the risk of spending my future wishing I could rewrite the past. How did we do? Dear 80-Year-Old Me, I’d give anything to know what you know. In fact, I guess I did. Now that I’m you, I’ve traded all my days and all my breaths to be where you are now. What does the future look like? Did our hair turn silver or white? Where are you? Do you sleep well? What are you reading? What model of phone do you have? Do they still call them phones? Did you ever figure out how to cook a decent mujadara? Maybe it’s impertinent, but I really want to fire the Question Cannon at you full blast. I can feel your questions floating back to me. Naturally you want to know why I am making the choices I’m making. There are bound to be dozens of things you know I would do differently if I had the information you have. If only you could shout loud enough and I could hear you, down through the years! Half a lifetime lies between us, a long string tied between two paper cups. (Remember those?) You know us well enough to know I’m trying. I always try to think of you, and leave you the money and the muscle and the skills I think you could use the most. Dear 80-Year-Old Me, I’m doing my best. I have a vision of you dying slowly in a recliner, letting our mind go blank in front of a TV set. That’s the scare tactic. We never wanted that. Did something happen to change your mind that I can’t foresee? I hope you’re laughing at these words in appreciation. We wanted to run a marathon before we turned 40, and we did that. We want/ed to run 50 miles for our 50th birthday, and I’m working on doing that, too. I’m trying to get you some good thick bones and some muscle while it’s still available for the getting. There are ladies your age who still have great posture and still go to the gym. Maybe you own a gym like that! Wouldn’t that be a kick? Dear 80-Year-Old Me, have you seen the world? Did you go everywhere we planned to go? Are you fluent in various languages? Gosh, I hope so. Remember how we had this idea that learning languages would prevent cognitive decline? I certainly hope you’re having a good, hearty laugh at that, too. I’d love to hear your laugh. Dear 80-Year-Old Me, who is our family now? Are we still married? (Ugh, maybe don’t answer that one). It’s weird for me to think that our nephews and niece might be grandparents in your time. In my time, we still have a huge family, and we don’t have much experience with loss yet. I’m trying my best to appreciate everyone who is here, and stay in touch, and love whom I can. I feel such sadness from you when I think how many funerals you’ve attended. That’s a message I can pick up loud and clear. Call more often, visit more often. I’ll try. I hope we get it right. Dear 80-Year-Old Me, if I knew everything you were doing right now, I’d always know what to do. I’d know which opportunities were real and which were mere distractions. I could track down all the people we’re supposed to meet. I could write so many checklists. We decided a long time ago not to stand there staring into the headlights of fate, but to try to create a destiny and blaze a trail. I’ll make every mistake possible, and there’s nothing you can do from your vantage point to try to wave me away from some dead ends. I can promise you, though, that I’ll keep moving and working for us and building a life we can agree is interesting and worth living. Dear 80-Year-Old Me, I love you so much. We’ve made a good team. It helps me every day to know you’re there waiting and watching over me and loving me from afar. In so many weird ways, it’s like you’re my grandmother, even though you’re really more of my grandchild. We’ve made each other who we are. One last question: What file format are you reading this in? Love, Me/Us/You Little Whippersnapper My husband and I started out as platonic friends. I thought I’d write about our experience of turning friendship into romance, and why I think it happened when it did. When we met, we were both bitterly divorced. I was about to turn 30 and he had a 10-year-old and a shared custody agreement. Not only are neither of us terribly romantic people, but I had gone so far as to get down on my knees and pray to any entity listening that I would please never, ever, ever feel infatuated with anyone ever again. Our expectations were at zero. This is important because I believe our desire to be in love leads us to overlook all the wrong stuff. What we need is an accurate picture of the other person’s character and personality, and then the ability to accept minor flaws as endearing quirks. What we tend to have is a muddled mess of our aspirations, projections, and fantasies mixed with bits and pieces of reality. Shortly after our casual work friendship began, I started dating someone. My work buddy/future husband had also been seeing someone, although I didn’t know about it because he never talked about her at work. This was another reason why we were able to become platonic friends. We weren’t even available. When our coworkers started gossiping about us, we thought it was funny, because there was totally nothing going on. We just liked hanging out and eating lunch together. We bonded quickly because we have a similar sense of humor and we could quote a lot of the same movies. It also turns out that we are both great confidantes, the kind of people always giving someone else a shoulder to cry on. I helped him set communication boundaries with his ex. He gave me financial advice and helped explain why I was having so much trouble shifting gears in my car. (“It’s not binary.”) I helped him clutter-clear his garage. It wasn’t long before we knew virtually every major personal detail about each other’s lives. We learned that we could trust each other. We felt empathy for each other. We cheered each other on and gave each other advice. We cracked each other up. We left each other notes. Suddenly, we were on the phone every night. Somehow it crept from 20 minutes to 2-3 hours. I was outraged when he told me he was having romantic feelings for me. I swore at him and raised my voice and accused him of all sorts of things. You see, I’ve had to have the “friend zone” conversation several times, and a couple of times it has ended what I thought was a perfectly good platonic friendship. I’m not a bakery and you’re not holding a ticket! This was a conversation that went on for at least a week. It seemed that no matter what happened, there we were, looking at each other and talking about it. He had become the background of my life. He was right, of course. We’ve been best friends for 10 years. My prayer was granted, and I got the love of my life without an infatuation stage. But was it inevitable? Why did it take us roughly a year and a half to start dating? Why did we date for three years before he proposed? I don’t think our friendship-to-marriage story was inevitable at all. For starters, if we had met at any earlier stage of our lives, it couldn’t have happened. Either I was too young or he was married with little kids. Second, I had gone on a couple of dates with an intriguing stranger I met on an airplane. If I had carried on with this person, our window of opportunity would have closed. (The guy turned out to be a dodgy character, which I found out on the third date when he shouted at me on the phone and then tried to convince me to go to a Super 8 with him on a coupon). But those are circumstantial. There are a few salient features of our friendship that I think are highly relevant to single people. When we met, I was obese, broke, in debt, and sleeping on an air mattress in a rented room. He was in such a bad place over his recent divorce that it was basically the only thing he could talk about. None of these characteristics say “meet cute.” There aren’t a lot of rom-coms about two train wrecks who fall in love, although, heck, it is the human condition after all. It turned out that my new work buddy/future husband had started a company tradition of holding an annual weight loss competition. He was down about 40 pounds from his top weight. They had me at “cash prize.” I wanted to eliminate my credit card debt and this looked like an enticing avenue. Between three of these contests, I won over $200 and succeeded in paying off my credit cards. So, suddenly I was free of consumer debt and a full four dress sizes smaller. Somewhere in there I got a promotion, a raise, and benefits. Then I moved from my shared house to my very own one-bedroom apartment. I wasn’t a train wreck anymore; I was starting to look like a fully functional mature adult. It probably isn’t a coincidence that the “romantic feelings” attached themselves to new apartment/size 6 me rather than air mattress/fat/broke me. Then what changed? I had never had my very own apartment before, and I was loving it. I decorated it with new furniture and started learning to cook. I kept working at my debt-reduction plan and paid off one of my student loans six years early. I got a better job and another promotion and more raises. I rented my own tiny house and moved across town. We went on vacation to Hawaii and he proposed on the top of Diamond Head. In a lot of ways, the progress of our relationship has been a series of “leveling up.” We’ve always liked each other and made each other laugh. We’ve always been honest and supportive to each other. We’ve always gravitated to each other and wanted to spend time together. We’ve always felt able to tell each other anything. The physical chemistry magically seemed to appear after we’d both lost 30 pounds. The emotional security grew over time, and it tracked closely with my career growth and financial security. The marriage came about when my little nest looked more attractive and homey than his. Whatever the mystical qualities are that cause the spark of love between two people, they weren’t all present for the first couple of years of our friendship. It makes me wonder whether it would have happened for us sooner if my life had been more together when we met. I was hell-bent on improving my personal situation when we met. I would have continued to do so whether we had made friends or not, whether we had dated or not, whether we had gotten married or not. I knew after my nasty divorce that it was infinitely better to live alone than to be with someone who was anything other than a fantastic match. I paid off my debts because I took responsibility for my own financial security. I was ambitious about my career because I wanted to rise to a level that fully engaged all my abilities and attention. I got fit because I hated being chronically ill and I wanted to be strong and healthy. I learned to cook because I like to eat awesome dinners. I made myself a cozy home because I like it that way. It is the irony of independence that all the things I did for myself attracted a husband. We revel in fantasy and romance because we wish they would solve all our problems. Solving our own problems makes room for the fantasy and romance to come in. |
AuthorI've been working with chronic disorganization, squalor, and hoarding for over 20 years. I'm also a marathon runner who was diagnosed with fibromyalgia and thyroid disease 17 years ago. This website uses marketing and tracking technologies. Opting out of this will opt you out of all cookies, except for those needed to run the website. Note that some products may not work as well without tracking cookies. Opt Out of CookiesArchives
January 2022
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