September 20, 2007
Thursday

One more piece of my “normal” life dropped into place today. It was the opening session of Faith with Friends, the Thursday morning women’s spirituality study group at my church. This activity is so important to me that in the past nine years I’ve missed it only a few times, and then only for really serious reasons, such as the broken leg that I sustained one December morning falling down the stairs on my way to leaving for the session. Our woman pastor, Cathy, (we are pastored by an ordained married couple) plans and leads the sessions, there are often very young children present, and there is always food and fellowship and thought-provoking discussion. 

Introductions of those who came to the circle this morning were something of a formality, since we all know one another. So Cathy posed a question that she wanted us to answer as we said our names. We were to indicate one thing we would like to accomplish in our lives that we have not yet done.

Our dreams, of course, were not so unusual. We want to visit places we’ve never been, learn a foreign language, complete a degree. Most of those dreams are unrealized because our time and our resources have been given over to raising children and providing for a family. It is lack of time more than lack of money or desire that keeps most of us from going forward with our plans.

When my turn came, I hesitated. I’ve had a fortunate life. I’ve been many of the places I’ve dreamed of (Africa remains on the yet-to-go-there list), and I lavish a good deal of time and money (and travel) on my education as a fiction writer. Last year I decided I wanted to be offered a residency at an artist’s colony, and eight weeks from today I’ll be arriving at Jentel in Wyoming instead of meeting with my Thursday morning friends.

So what did I tell my friends? What one thing have I not accomplished that I want to?

I want a clean, uncluttered house.

And a Pulitzer Prize. 

I have not yet written anything that could even possibly be considered for a Pulitzer, yet sometimes I think that goal is more likely to be achieved than the other. 

I’ve laid out my Six Goals of a Quality Life before, more than once. I am not even going to provide the links, because I feel too discouraged about my progress on so many of them (except, perhaps, the writing — I did, after all, snag a residency). A fellow online journaller, Karen, captured my feelings precisely in a piece she posted last week:

I’ve been thinking about goals more than usual lately, maybe because it’s September and the fresh start back to school energy is buzzing all around me even though I’m not going back myself. It’s a bit discouraging to read earlier entries I’ve written about goals because while I have made some changes and gotten some things done there are important areas where I’m worse (or at least no better) off now than I was five or four or three years ago. Overall, I’ve got a good life, no doubt about it, but it could be better. I could be thinner and fitter and healthier. I could be more organized. I could be less surrounded by clutter. But so far I haven’t followed through long term any one of the dozens (hundreds? thousands?) of times I’ve vowed to do something about those things. Why not just give up and embrace the way it is now? Because I believe if I am not at least trying to improve, things will deteriorate. I’ll get heavier and heavier, messier and messier, less and less happy. So I keep at it, motivation and energy surging and waning but always with a vision, sometimes clear, sometimes blurry, o f how much better I’ll feel if I succeed at making changes. When I succeed, I should say. Gotta think and talk positively, right?

Why not just give up? Because, like Karen, I believe that if I don’t keep trying, things will get worse. I read Karen’s piece at the beginning of this week, and it gave me some hope, some motivation. I did manage to swap out my summer clothes for my winter clothes, and, in the process, actually discard about eight t-shirts I know I acquired in the summer of 2002. I liked them all and wore them regularly. Three were from the gift shop at Walden Pond. One of them bore Thoreau’s admonition to beware of enterprises that require new clothes.

That got me started on the bedroom, and two-thirds of it is now clean and uncluttered. I am determined to finish it this weekend. (In the interests of full disclosure, I should note that some of the clutter from the two-thirds that now seems quite nice did get pushed over to the final third, posing something of a practical problem that I do not at present have a solution for.)

Next week? The dining room. When I left for Faith with Friends this morning I had to locate the book we are currently discussing, begun last spring and continued for our fall term. It was exactly where I had put it in May, in a pile among other piles that currently render the dining room more of a walk-in closet than a place to sit with guests.

Thoreau also said, Simplify, Simplify!

I don’t think I bought that t-shirt.