Cleaning the Clutter

Be honest, you like cleaning.

Not the sweeping, washing, scrubbing, dusting part.

You like the end result.  Clutter free, spick and span, squeaky clean.

No one usually likes the process. Everyone usually likes the result.

I could turn that into a lesson on falling in love with the grind and taking joy in things most people don’t, but that’s not where I’m going with this.

Recently I was evaluating some things in my own life.  For the last 6 months, or however long it’s been since I moved to Nashville, I’ve been busy.

I don’t mean the “busy” people say when someone asks you how you are and you say: “busy”

Whether it’s extended hours at work, my “job” technically being two equally demanding jobs, adjusting to a new place, or the business of family and social events, I have been, to say the least, busy.

Some of that has made it hard to keep my life at the level I had grown accustomed to. Things that I had plenty of time for I now have to squeeze in or delete all together.  Things like the gym, staying in touch with friends, and writing this blog (as ashamed as I am to say that).

As your schedule fills up and you find less and less “time” you focus your time on what really matters.  I started thinking about that concept last week as I was making a new daily schedule excel file. 

For being a laid back and creative minded guy I am a nut at planning. I could schedule anything. I plan and diagram vacations and make folders for each trip we take.  Don’t get me wrong, I love doing nothing or having free time, but I also love structure, it’s a fine mix.

So as I worked on a weekly schedule where I can list each day out and plan, by time of day, what I should be doing (this was mainly a “Jordan needs to write more” experiment) I thought about all the time I: 1) have, and 2) waste.

Scheduling my day/week out puts it into perspective.

In Excel I listed each day in one column. I started at 5am and made each row of every column a half hour time slot. For the hours I am normally at work I made each row a two-hour time slot.

That might make sense, it might not, it’s not really important.

What it is important is I saw how much time before and after work really did exist.

Then came the hard part.

I had to admit that I had plenty of time to do the things I want and need to do. I am just choosing to spend them in other ways.

I can make excuses for that time, or I can man up and make the changes I need.

Some of them aren’t easy.

I spend too much time watching TV after work.  I spend too much time sleeping before work.  I scroll through social media “catching up” on things for hours on the couch.  I, regrettably have to admit, probably spend too much time watching College Football on Saturdays.

It doesn’t just stop at those basic things.  College football aside, those are most likely big time wasters for just about anyone, but there are also more specific ones.  Maybe you spend too much time out with friends or doing things you know are a waste. 

Sometimes it’s hard but saying no to those friends or putting down that video game for a while is what you really need.

Otherwise you’re putting those things in front of what you keep saying is what you want to do.

Thinking about why you need more time puts it into perspective.

It’s different for every person. Maybe you aren’t trying to write a book.  Maybe you are.  Either way, cutting out the waste will clean up your life.  It gives you more time for you, for your family, and for your dreams.

I wrote this because I know I have some cleaning to do.  I don’t want to, but I know I’ll feel better when it’s done. 

Conversations.

It is funny what conversations can do.

The way they can leave you and change a mood, outlook, or feeling in just an instant. 

The other day I talked to a small boy who was in 2nd grade.
He was a chatty little man. While his mom shopped he started off a conversation with me all his own about the Lego set he had just gotten.

As conversations go, dipping and weaving, this one wound its way to talk about the two most prominent thing on his mind: His love of reading.
I was told by this chubby, sweet, goofy little child that he would much rather read his baskets full of books than watch TV. That sometimes his mom had to tell him "no" when he asked to go to Barnes & Noble.  

I can say there are few times I have been more surprised. 
Few moments I have wanted to hug random 2nd graders for "restoring faith in humanity".

The other thing to note that came up in our discussion was what he wanted to be when he grew up: He wants to be Train Engineer.
As he said, because he'll get to see the world and shovel coal. 

This reminded me of how kids think. How nothing is out of reach, nothing is "undreamable, if you will. And something strenuous and back breaking like shoveling coal for a living is just a fun advantage to the job. 

I don't know where we lose this attitude. I know we cast it aside as youthful innocence, I know we laugh and say "isn't that the cutest thing". 
But maybe it isn't.
Maybe that's not it at all.
As much as we think about recapturing childhood, and I do believe it is more than we realize, maybe we should take a more childhood approach to work, dreams, and shoot, even life. 

Those are just a few things I learned this week from a 2nd grader. 
It helped me remembered why writing is important and what I want to do when I grow up.

Kids These Days.

Yea I'm getting older.  

Not something you think about or realize and even with my recent birthday, thank you thank you you're too kind, it's not something I really notice that I'm not a teenager anymore. 

That is until something like #GrowingUpWithStrictParents starts trending on Twitter.  

Now I get it, I really do. In my youth I thought my parents were the most unreasonable of all adults on the planet. I think most kids feel this way. 
But what I really got out of this social media "event" was kids today crying about how their parents take away their phones. Their phones. The iPhone's and Androids that 14 year olds have that can surf the web and watch movies and make voice commands.  

Now I'm not old and grumpy enough to act like I didn't have a phone as a teenager. Cell phones were a relatively new science that were just beginning to become the normal thing for adults to own. I got my first cell phone my last year of high school. Not the faster than light also a spaceship kind pf today but a small Verizon flip phone with a nub antenna sticking off of it that severely poked you in the thigh if it was in your pocket and you bent the wrong way. Or anytime you wore pants as tight as I did. 

So as people who grew up prior to color television or cars can understand my chagrin at younger youths complaining how they get such technological marvelousness taken from them by their strict parents. For the life of me: what are they complaining about? Instagram and snapchat will still be there when they get their phones back.

It's not like when I was 14 and you took a picture on a film camera and your friend said "Hey you wanna upload that to a social network?"

And you were like, "Yea that'd be cool so all my friends can see it!"

But then he said, "Well that's too bad cause nothing like that exists."

On my first cellphone if you hit the "internet" button you had a mini heart attack just before you hit the back button 57 times, turned off the power, and slammed it on the ground in a million pieces in hopes you wouldn't incur whatever $100 billion dollar data fee it was for connecting to the Internet.

At that point there wasn't even really anything on the Internet for me to check.  

MySpace was sort of around, sure maybe I could get on Yahoo but by the time the page loaded my phone battery would have died so would it have really been worth it? 

There were no multiple social networks and apps to be had. No Buzzfeeds or Reddits to give me endless hilarity and kitten pictures. 

I guess I didn't realize what I was missing by not having these entitlements. Now it seems non access to such jubilation is a death sentence.
When/if my phone was taken away life simply reverted back to how it was for...oh, every other year of my life. 

Playing sports outside. Building something. Testing out the "Dig a Hole to China" thing until you get bored and your hands hurt from blisters and you realize just how much being in a real life version of the movie Holes would suck. 

And yes it's not just connection to the interwebs that makes today's revoked phone privileges such a pain for the youths. It's also the disconnect amungst friends. No talking to your friends, or texting to be more specific because talking on a phone is dumb. It's true that we have reached Alexander Graham Bell's true vision for the telephone as a completely silent and phalangicle communication device. But my quip is that you don't get how good you have it kids of today. Complain that you can't text your friends because your parents took your phone, but realize at lest when you can text them again you don't have to hit the 7 key four times times to get an "S". 

The barbaric romanticism of T9 texting and it's laborious ways is lost on the young ones. There was a time when you got words wrong, not because your phone thought you wanted to say something else, because you either hit the 6 key two times instead of three or you forgot to hit the "next" key on the word "good" and said "That'll be home".

At any rate, you don't know how good you have it. In my day you had to ride your bike 5 miles to the video game store uphill both ways. This post is supposed to be ironic, but seriously, stop complaining that your strict parents took your smart phone away. Because we all know you just rolled your eyes and got on your IPad to watch 7 hours of Netflix while you stream Pandora. 

Courage.

I once had courage.

There wasn't much that could get in my way and even less that could stop me. Somewhere along the way this gets lost. We get lost. We lose sight. 

I once had.

It isn't so much a fatal injury. Not so much a dead end turn. 
It is a cut that will leave a scar. It is a course that needs correcting.

I once.

It's a number of feasible, understandable, acceptable reasons.
Or maybe it's excuses. 

I.

Don't say that we lost it. More than likely it's just hiding. If you don't use it, you lose it. Thank goodness that lost is not gone. That lost is just waiting to be found. That there is still time. 

 I have.

There may be some distance between me and the man I want to be. There may be miles and oceans. It may take years to get there. But we forget just how important the journey is.

I have courage.

We forget that dreams are salvageable. 
We forget that salvaging is an action. 

I have courage again.

 

Focus.

A man can change his stars.

Rise. And rise again until Lions become Lambs. 

Wake and rake, and just be better today than we were yesterday. Because the rent is due everyday. There is no substitute for hard work, and hustle will pay off.

Discipline. Don't talk. Act. Be humble. Be hungry. Because all it takes is all you got. And always.

Always be the hardest worker in the room.