Tuesday 3 January 2012

Finding that $20 bill

Welcome to the new year.

I have been, in the final days of 2011, frantically trying to sort out what I want to let go of and create in this new year ahead. I can not say the process has been pretty. As I look out into the days before me I am wonderfully plagued with questions. Some of them are invigorating and exciting, others scare the beejezus out of me. It seems that once again, I am given the opportunity to create my space as I wish and create who I am in that space.

When I was a little girl every time I endeavored to clean my room - often cluttered with creative projects, half eaten snacks, letters and books, notes, plans, clothes, art supplies - there was always part of the process where things got messier before they got better. For some reason I had been compelled to open up all of the drawers and turn out their contents, to dump out all of the boxes and flip over the bed and move the shelves to meet the self imposed criteria of a thorough clean. Sometimes the room actually looked cleaner at the end of the process as I sorted and organized and sometimes it didn't.  I suppose unknowingly I was creating how the room 'felt' and, how I felt in the room. It was  as though the cleanliness mattered less than the process of remembering and acknowledging all that I had created or accumulated or gathered or tried on during the months that led me to the 'big clean'. Touching the notes that I had been compelled to write or leafing through journal pages honoring the whims of my thoughts that had already been forgotten; choosing to let go of a sweatshirt that had served me well but was torn with wear and ready to be retired; returning to a crazy idea or sketch that had been born in some strange hour past midnight, composed with a blue white clarity of  creative mind despite the blurry eyes and stiff fingers holding the pencil, all of these were, as a young girl, important to my process. I realize now with new appreciation what I must have known instinctively back then - things get messier before they get better.  By remembering where we have been we can create where we are going. Back then I didn't wrong the act of gathering, cluttering, collecting. In fact there was a charm, almost a pride in the creative courage to make something that didn't have a place, to put something where it didn't belong and then to see how that made the room feel. I remember in my teens when I worked as a waitress, I would gather my tips after my shift and hide a $20 bill here and there in the pages of journals, in between the mattresses, under my socks in my sock drawer so that long after I had forgotten placing the bills in their  hiding spots, I could find them and it would be like finding treasures. (To be honest, this little act of childish self-deceit is something I still do and every time I open a journal and find a $5 or a $20 bill it makes me smile).

In my room, as a child, there were a few key things that I knew:
1. My room was going to get messy
2. I could always clean up the mess
3. There were treasures to be found

I suppose the next task at hand for me is to decide where I am going to hide the treasures that I will find in 2012 and to determine what it will take for me to have the courage to make a mess, sort through it and feel the brilliance of discovery.
I wonder, what will your room look like this year? What will support you in finding the treasures you may have hidden for yourself years ago?

Prosperity and happiness to you!