Tag: connection

Giving Up

Leave a comment

IMG_8050

I am in danger of letting it all go. Taking a giant energetic eraser and wiping my stuff slate clean.  Instead of a POD, a dumpster. I’m going to put all the pretty breakable things I own on the kitchen counter and let Kitty Andersen have her way with them. I’m over it.

I am in danger of quitting. Holding on to what’s left, petting it, apologizing to it for casting out its friends. I’m itching to skulk around antique and thrift shops looking for something I didn’t know I needed then squeezing it in between other items without meaning.

I am in the process of purging.

Everything is energy and everything has energy – a bit of magic formed of memories and wishes. A rock collected from the Long Island Sound. Or was it the banks of the Ganges. Maybe someone gave it to me. A tiny Buddha living among others of its kind on an altar with things that, when held individually, seem to lose most of their meaning and charm. Where did he come from?

If I don’t know where they came from how can they have meaning?

It is this energy or connection I am becoming very sensitive to. It was most telling when I was moving my altar items to a box for safe keeping whilst I hurricaned about the place. I considered every piece of preciousness and of the 253,876 items, maybe 10 elicited a knowing smile. The rest more of an exasperated sigh at my ridiculous assignment of meaning to every rock and every feather I have ever found. (More on altars later.)

I am both burdened by this stuff and buoyed by it. It brings me joy and sometimes peace and it frustrates the hell out of me.

I can tell you that being able to take my time with my stuff has been mostly a positive experience and I’m grateful to be able to do this my way. It gives me great pleasure to hand over items that have meaning to me to others that can find new life for them. But I am doing this without attachment or condition. If I personally hand a book to someone it is always with the permission to “feel free to regift, recycle or do whatever you’d like with it.”

I am, of course, holding on to some very precious things, but I am trying to make those items the exception. And I’m even questioning those things.

Because Larry and I have a few antique spaces between us I am afforded the luxury of cycling some items through and possibly recouping my initial investment or even making an extra buck or two. An old radio flyer wagon, for instance,  with peeling red paint that sits atop my (almost empty) TV cabinet. I like the addition of color and the stories of the children it must have held. One day I’ll tire of it and pass it along. Sell to someone who can make up their own narratives.

Currently my house is once again in turmoil, this seems to be the cycle. Pull everything out from its hiding place, paw through it, roll eyes, sort, toss, pile, purge. Then do it all over again. Until there are just no more hiding places. From my perch on the sofa I spy:

  • 2 boxes of CDs waiting to be delivered to new homes
  • 6 stacks of CDs yet to be sorted through (down from about a million)
  • 3 stacks of magazines (one with paint color ideas, one to be given away to a friend  and one yet to go through – a short stack)
  • 1 looming stack of books to be priced and sold
  • 3 stacks of books to go to the studio for adoption
  • 4 empty boxes waiting to be filled for Good Will (at least 50 boxes have been transported so far)

But all these piles, while causing momentary shortness of breath and heart palpitations, can be moved into their proper places – outside my home – by end of day tomorrow and I can vacuum and dust and space clear and do a happy dance until the next time.

The goal again, for me, is to whittle all of my possessions down to just what I can see, just what I love or has beautiful inspirational meaning or what is useful. And not to restart the cycle of collection and purging. But it’s in stages and steps. (More on my process coming soon.)

For now, stuff is moving out, space is being revealed. The math is working.

Marketing Madness

Leave a comment

YOUR AD HERE

Sometimes the most curious thoughts cross my mind.

Everything from philosophical probings like “Why are we really here?” to the more distracting ruminations on political theater and nefarious marketers.

We’ll leave the life purpose question for later. Right now I want to address marketing.

Not all marketers or advertisers are bad. Advertising has a long and conflicted history. On the surface, businesses just want someone to buy their product or use their service. They believe fervently that their product – above all others – is going to be good and necessary for you.

But within the past 100 years, maybe longer, advertising has become increasingly clever and insidious.

Advertisers, marketers and public relations all pull from the same spin manual. Make it look good, make it not only seem necessary, but vital. You need this, it will make you a better person and everyone will want to be you. Ergo: you’re not good enough the way you are.

  • Did you know there is really no such thing as medical halitosis? It was created by advertisers so they could sell the cure. Mouth wash.
  • Did you know you don’t need soap to clean your laundry? It’s the agitation of the washing machine that does the work.
  • Did you know that our current understanding of what Santa Claus looks like is due in large part to the advertising geniuses at Coca-Cola? They did not create the images of the jolly fellow, but rather advertised it so ubiquitously that it is now the standard Santa.

We are assaulted a million times a day by branding and advertising. There are the obvious: billboards, magazines ads and flashing online annoyances. There are placemats, the backs of receipts and gas pumps. But there is also product placements in your favorite TV shows or movies, sometimes obvious like the giant red Folgers can in most Hallmark movies and some more subtle like the brands of cars people are driving.

In addition, companies pay pretty people to wear their clothes and post “candid” shots on Instagram and other forms of social media. You might follow them because their lifestyle looks awesome or they’re beautiful.

Everything we wear has a label, usually on the outside, making us walking billboards for such companies. And also so we can readily identify our socioeconomic tribe.

And now Facebook has us marketing to each other. Only some of your friends’ comments and posts come up in your feed, the ones you engage with the most. To see them more often you must visit them more often and comment on or like their posts. Businesses that have Facebook pages can no longer be found easily, they must reach out with paid advertising and even then the user must visit that page often enough to see the posts in their feed. This makes sense if it’s an actual business, but many of the “pages” are individuals who are making jewelry or soap or trying to get you to come to their play or yoga class.

We are under assault and the enemy is us.

Take your power back. Choose what you see. We can’t unsee billboards but we can not pick up a magazine or newspaper. We can unsubscribe from services that are little more than selling algorithms. We can recognize we need or want something organically, then seek out a solution. We can allow the thought of someone we haven’t heard from in a while to float into our awareness then reach out to that person. Actually ask them how they’re doing rather than just checking in on Facebook or worse, trolling their feed to satisfy your own curiosity. We’ve all done it.

This may sound angry, but anger is really fear. And I will admit I am afraid that we are losing connection with each other. Real face-to-face and voice-to-voice connection.  The art of conversation has been diminished to characters, empathy and compassion are being co-opted by a barrage of violent images to which we are becoming desensitized.

And we are lazy. We are having parties online now. (My eyes are rolling so far back in my head I may detach something.)

I am grateful for the internet, it’s hard to remember life before it. I am grateful for the opportunity to reconnect with family and friends through social media. And maybe it’s not really social media’s fault. Could they have predicted how we use this tool? Perhaps.

Choose how you will spend the precious commodity of time. How will you use up your life force?