Spring of Paring Down

Disclaimer: This post has nothing to do with cooking or how to shop for the perfect paring knife. Foodies be warned!

If I counted how many coats, t-shirts and shoes I have I would be ashamed to write the number here. If I added all of my purses, scarves and gloves you’d think I was joking. I have a habit of holding onto clothes and shoes in case (“What if? What if?!”) I need them in the future. I always dread the day I’ll search for an item in my closet and then woefully remember, “Oh yeah, I donated that last year.”

My closet is like a time capsule. I can recall where I bought almost every item and which ones were gifts. I remember how much of a discount I got and the significant events I wore them to. Giving away a shirt or a hoodie is like giving away a packet of memories. For the past few months I’ve had a “To donate” pile in my bathroom. It just sits there. Every once in a while I add to the pile. Occasionally I pull an item out for rescue.

Clothes and shoes are only the tip of the iceberg. For lack of better words I have a lot of “just about everything.” I have a ton of inexpensive jewelry (hello Forever 21!), lotion (a popular birthday gift), old birthday cards and playbills. My collection of nail polish is so extensive I can hardly close my bathroom drawer without routine reorganizations. The presence of three different curling irons in said drawer isn’t much help.

I also have a problem area in my living room which has been boiling over for a while. My collection of scrap fabric and ribbon for craft projects is out of control! It used to fit in a plastic drawer set but lately it has spread to a few additional baskets and boxes and every once in a while it escapes onto the kitchen counter. Naughty, naughty!

I decided on this “Spring of Paring Down” seasonal theme almost a month ago. I tackled my fabric drawers first and made this entire wreath using fabric I already had. Not a bad start, right?

Looking around my apartment I know there is more I can do. I need to cut down my leftover inventory from my out-of-commission Etsy shop. I absolutely have to turn my old clothes and shoes in to Deseret Industries. I need to paste all of my souvenir tickets into my long-abandoned scrap book. Literally I want to get rid of half the stuff in my apartment. I am going to use the month of April to tackle all of this and then I’m going to spend May and June maintaining the new-found sanity.

In short Phase One will involve attacking these problem areas:

A. Closet: Pull every item out of my closet which I haven’t worn for one year. Say goodbye.

B. Bathroom drawers: Chuck all old nail polishes. Get rid of superfluous items.

C. Desk: Collect all tickets and other sentimental scraps. Slap them into scrapbook.

D. Fabric drawers & Etsy inventory: Organize all remaining fabric and ribbon. Re-open Etsy shop and sell everything at a deep discount.

E. Basement storage area: Remove all unused furniture/decoration items. Give them away.

Phase Two (read: maintenance) will test my resolve but I think if I make it all the way to June without re-cluttering my life then I can probably make it the rest of the year. If I can make it the rest of the year then maybe I can make it the rest of my life. Well, the rest of my “single” life at least.

If this doesn’t count as “paring down” I don’t know what does. I am already excited to see the progress. Happy Spring Cleaning to all and to all a good night!

Winter of Will

Thanks to a long and lavish Christmas break I have some extra work to do at the gym. After a few hours’ debate I pulled myself off the couch, changed into my workout clothes and headed out. Tonight’s gym visit required a little more brain power than normal (I had to figure out how to work the brand new treadmill) but it was well worth it. Perhaps I spent too much time decoding the fancy control panel on the treadmill. By the time I got back into the locker room and stood in front of my locker I had completely forgotten the combination to my lock.

I bought the lock in 2009 for my trip to Brazil and I keep a copy of the combination in a hiding spot in my closet. I could have sworn the three numbers in my combination were 2, 6 and 36. I tried every arrangement of those numbers before forcing myself to step back, sit down and think again. Maybe it was 2, 6, and 32. After several failed attempts I started thinking of ways to contact my roommate so she could go into my closet, find the combination and read it to me. Since we are in a most fantastic age of cell phones I only have two phone numbers memorized: my dad’s cell number and my home phone number in California. The only thing I could think of was asking the staff members at the front desk if I could use their phone to call my mom and then asking her to email my roommate and having my roommate call the gym. I stopped myself short when I realized they probably wouldn’t allow me to dial a long distance number.

Convinced I was going to have to ask a staff member to cut my lock off I knew I only had once choice. I had to clear my thoughts of all possible combinations and wait for the image of the written combination to pop into my head. I tore my eyes away from the word “Master” engraved on the lock. Consciously steering my mind away from the thing I needed most led me on a hopscotch-like tangent of number-free contemplations. Just as I was delving into a random idea free of any useful purpose a combination came to mind. I thought for sure I had already tried it but I reached for the lock one more time. After turning the dial for the third time I pulled down on the lock and POP! It opened. I was very happy to leave the locker room and everyone who had seen me staring at the lock hopelessly.

I walked out to the parking lot with my trusty Master lock in hand and a line from “Invictus” by William Ernest Henley came to mind: “I am the master of my fate/I am the captain of my soul.” I was happy that the little lock had forced me to stop and really think, “Who’s in charge here?” I had to either remember a short combination of numbers or find someone to bail me out of a frustrating situation. Luckily the numbers finally hit me and although I might have spent 5 or 10 extra minutes in the locker room I still exercised a bit of willpower by going to the gym in the first place.

Sometimes I feel like will is a muscle that needs to be strengthened into a rock hard form and other times I feel like it needs to be stretched and tenderized. There are many things I want this year (heck, I feel like I have the whole year planned out!) but I know it will be a balancing act between my will and God’s. I want to push myself to accomplish more but I want to do it for the right reasons. In all, I want the will to wait, try, learn, sacrifice, and be present for others. You could call these my New Year’s Resolutions.

Willing to Wait

All good things come to those who wait, right? Let’s hope so! There are certain things about my life that I wish I could change but when things don’t go according to my plan I want to have more patience and wait for “the right time.” However I will be mindful of the words of George Jackson, “Patience has its limits. Take it too far, and it’s cowardice.”

Willing to Try

“Make voyages. Attempt them. There is nothing else.” Tennessee Williams

When I was younger I was a big chicken. I always felt too scared to try out for soccer teams, too scared to audition for plays, etc. This year I would like to put myself out there (not in a dating sense, more in a “try new things” sense) and reach for greater things. (Yes, I’m purposefully being vague. If things go well I’ll blog about it, trust me.)

Willing to Learn

“The greatest intellectual capacities are only found in connection with a vehement and passionate will.” Arthur Schopenhauer

I want to look back in 12 months and think of all the things I learned. Life lessons can be painful but I hope to learn lots of enjoyable things along the way.

Willing to Sacrifice

I enjoy Christmas’s glad tidings of the birth of the Savior but in all honesty I prefer to consider Easter Sunday’s reminder of Christ’s sacrifice. Matthew 26:39 tells of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, “And he went a little further, and fell on his face, and prayed, saying, O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt.” A few verses later Jesus asks the disciples to stay awake and keep watch while he is in the garden, “Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak,” (Matthew 26:41). Jesus Christ made the ultimate sacrifice and I would like to give something back. I think being more watchful and prayerful would be a good start for me.

Willing to Be Present

“Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.” Theodore Roosevelt

I have a lot of dreams but I can’t neglect the present. Someday, somehow a few of my dreams might come true. In the meantime I have to work with what I already have. I want to be available for my friends and family. Above all else I need to resist the urge to escape reality.

I really hope your new year is starting off strong. I hope mine will have more focus now that I’ve put all of this into words. While daydreaming might not always be the most productive activity, sometimes it can bring to mind a most important fact or idea (or in my case a combination). I hope the numbers line up for you this year and things fall into place. If you find yourself reeling from a failed attempt at a new endeavor just remember these words from Winston Churchill, “In war, as in life, it is often necessary, when some cherished scheme has failed, to take up the best alternative open, and if so, it is folly not to work for it with all your might.”

Spring of Reckoning

Spring in Utah is a finicky, flirty creature which dances in and out of my ever wishful view. In late April the sun shines bright, in mid May the rain pours down and in early June snowflakes make a most unwelcome encore appearance. Spring here is backwards and brief. While I’ve been waiting for the sun to stay around for a whole week, I’ve been thinking about this season’s theme: Spring of Reckoning. The name bothered me for a while – at least until I went home to California for Mother’s Day weekend. Upon leaving the Oakland Airport I saw a familiar billboard reminding me that the end of the world is scheduled for Saturday May 21^st, 2011. (My oh my, that’s tomorrow!) It got me thinking that if the world is going to end tomorrow (which it isn’t) and if mankind will be sent scrambling from utter destruction (which they won’t), how would I act differently today?

In most “end of the world” movies there is usually a reflection of devastation set on by mobbers, looters and other profiteers. It’s kind of funny to see people breaking into stores and stealing electronics when impending asteroids, fast-spreading epidemics and hungry monsters promise to wipe out 95% of the cast of a typical 90-minute flick, not to mention their local power supply! I hope that if I’m around to see the end of the world (and I don’t) then I’ll be able to keep my head on straight and resist the last-minute temptation to rob a bank. I would want to feel at peace with whatever was happening. It could be fun to run around city streets screaming my head off and breaking windows with crowbars but I imagine I’ll probably be an old lady by then and practically immobile. Maybe if I get bored in my old age I’ll figure out how to turbo boost my mobility scooter. (I could slap on a customized license plate that says something along the lines of “Scoot it or lose it!” Now that’d be a party!) Back to the serious stuff, though – in order to feel the least bit prepared for “the end” I would have to do everything possible to follow the commandments and feel the spirit of the Lord in my life. That, my friend, is priority #1.

Everyone goes about their relationship with God in a different way and for me personally it starts with changes in my day-to-day life. Instead of acting like spring in Utah (unreliable and fleeting), I can be more like winter in Utah (unshakable and never-ending. Literally.) If I dedicate myself to something I should hold onto it with a frozen fist and not allow spring showers to cloud my view. The whiteness of winter can make the smallest discrepancy stand out like a sore thumb. While I’ve never considered myself a “letter of the law” type of person I have been trying to watch out for shades of gray that try to disguise themselves as acceptable paths of righteousness. This spring I want to rededicate myself to the promises and goals I made throughout my life. They range drastically, covering everything from my family to my career, my religion and personal health. I would like to do as much as possible to reach my potential in the time allotted to me (no matter how short or long it is.)

Since the world is going to end tomorrow (not!) I don’t want to draw this out. Suffice it to say that this particular cuckoo prediction of the apocalypse has afforded me a little more time than usual to reflect on “the end” (or the beginning, if you prefer to think of it that way) and what I can do today to be more ready. Today, just like every day, I can send out love to everyone important to me. Today, just like every day, I can try to be the best “me” possible. And tomorrow, in God’s mercy, affords me another chance. Here’s to yesterday and today, but mostly tomorrow. May it be a sweet, sunny, even forgettable day. Come what may.

THE END

(or is it?)

Winter of Worth

There is something electrifying about the beginning of a new year. I clearly remember December 31st, 2009. Everything seemed to have gone kaput but 2010 promised to be a new beginning and a major turning point for several people I was close to. It felt really good to know that 2009 was over. Only a few months into 2010 there proved to be major problems. I won’t go into the details but I experienced three heart-wrenching losses in February, April and May. Suddenly 2010 wasn’t turning out to be everything it had promised. While I had equally amazing experiences last year, it will probably go down in my personal history as the “fake out” year.

I wanted to end the year well so I tried a new goal – studying for the GMAT in hopes of earning a competitive score for business school. Perhaps I could end the year with a bang. As was fitting of 2010, it was a bang indeed. It sounded kind of like a “ka-boom!” and I believe my performance would be termed a “bomb.” I took the GMAT on December 18th and while I have had a chance to tell some of you personally, I’m telling the rest of you now that I fell well below the score I was aiming for. (The GMAT is computer-based and you receive your verbal and quantitative scores before leaving the testing center.) At about 8 pm I left the testing center with my head down wondering what on earth I had done wrong. I thought I had done really well but I was shocked to see my score was about 100 points lower than I predicted. I couldn’t imagine telling everyone about what had happened. I just kept thinking, “It wasn’t even worth it.”

Luckily I was able to go home for Christmas and get the GMAT off my mind. I came back to P-town in time for a very inspiring New Year’s Eve party. Everyone was rallying. Several people echoed the “See ya 2010!” sentiment and we ended the year in style. By Sunday my mind was swimming with ideas for New Year’s resolutions and winter goals. I was excited for the new opportunities this year hold. At church I was listening with new ears and seeing with new eyes. I had been trying to think of a theme for winter and it finally hit me: this is the Winter of Worth. Not only I am going to make the next three months count, but I’m also going to focus on others’ worth. I also want to understand where my feelings of self worth come from. Usually I prefer to enter hibernation mode during winter but instead this will be the season where I commit to seeing the value in everything around me. I am going to break out of my “me me me” mind frame and build the teams I am a part of. It feels too early to abandon the Christmas spirit and I want to see how long I can hold onto it. If I can spend my time more wisely and allow others to show me all the ways I can improve then perhaps nothing will send 2011 into a tailspin.

Even though I feel like the GMAT was a waste, I’m pretty sure this feeling is temporary. It was good to do a deep math review and I learned a lot of grammar rules that I didn’t even know existed. As for the GMAT score which will haunt me for the next five years (even if I take it again and score higher, the admissions committees will be able to see this initial score) I am learning to not let it define my abilities. Some day I’ll know that this bump in the road was all worth it.

As time goes on I have a better understanding of the deep sorrows and unmatched joys that life holds. I know that no one is immune to disappointment and grief. I have been thinking a lot about how I can better, “mourn with those that mourn; yea, and comfort those that stand in need of comfort,” (Mosiah 18:9). I think the answer is to learn the meaning of charity. The exact definition has eluded me for years, perhaps because I’ve scarcely allowed it to work in my heart. Alma 34:29 reads, “Therefore, if ye do not remember to be charitable, ye are as dross, which the refiners do cast out, (it being of no worth) and is trodden under foot of men.” That’s a scary thought. Oftentimes I measure my self worth by criteria that have little to nothing to do with charity. The ability to draw confidence and motivation by meeting worldly criteria can quickly shatter when a valued possession, ability or opportunity is taken away. Although it is nice to have nice things and live in nice places and wear nice clothes, those things will never be more important than the ability to love and learn.

Proverbs 3:13-18 reads, “Happy is the man that findeth wisdom, and the man that getteth understanding. For the merchandise of it is better than the merchandise of silver, and the gain thereof than fine gold. She is more precious than rubies: and all the things thou canst desire are not to be compared unto her. Length of days is in her right hand; and in her left hand riches and honour. Her ways are ways of pleasantries, and all her paths are peace. She is a tree of life to them that lay hold upon her: and happy is every one that retaineth her.”

In my quest to see worth in everything around me and value the time I’ve been allotted, perhaps I will become better acquainted with charity. It is very sad to see the warm Christmas season dissipate amidst a frigid January backdrop, and I believe we’d all be much happier if taking down the Christmas lights didn’t coincide with boxing up our charitable compassion. Make the season last, find the worth in every day – even the tough ones – and love those who have been placed in your path. Maybe one day we’ll be able to trade in our Christmas trees for the tree of life. When Nephi witnessed the tree of life in a vision an angel asked, “Knowest thou the meaning of the tree which thy father saw?” (1 Nephi 11:21) Nephi replied, “Yea, it is the love of God, which sheddeth itself abroad in the hearts of the children of men; wherefore it is the most desirable above all things,” (1 Nephi 11:22). But that’s not all. The angel replied, “Yea, and the most joyous to the soul,” (1 Nephi 11:23).

I want this year to be memorable for all the right reasons. Maybe it will be the year I truly learn how to love. Maybe it will be the year I stop watching too much TV. Whatever the reason, I just hope I can be driven by a selfless desire to bring joy to others. I’ll need help with this, so please remind me on the way. I definitely can’t do it alone.