Five. 5. Number five. It has, of course, taken on a different significance for me than it ever did before. Frankly, five just wasn't a number I paid much attention to, preferring the infinitely more interesting 17 or 19. Suddenly I've become the "5 a Day" woman. Each day I religiously gather five things to let go of/get rid of/cease to own. A while ago I put the question out there to others "what things that seem overwhelming do you think you could conquer if you tackled them incrementally"? I don't remember when that was, quite a while ago I think. One problem with my decision to give each blog entry only a chronological day as a title is that it makes it impossible to find past posts by topic. Whenever it was, I began thinking about the question myself and have adopted "incrementalism" as my planning methodology in a few different ways with more in the planning stage. I reported, for instance, that I would pull five weeds every time I go to the chicken coop. Now my property is pretty close to free from tumbleweed skeletons. I sometimes substitute picking up five pieces of blown in garbage instead. I want to build a hugelkultur bed so will soon be switching to spending 15 minutes on it daily for my outdoor project. I have explained how I work with a timer and take regular breaks which keeps me productive on several fronts and my house tidy. Just today I decided to spend 15 minutes per day on reorganizing (again) my art space. It becomes a horrible mess as I tend to pull things out when I'm working and then have no interest whatsoever in putting them away. I figure that if I stay up late working on some inspired creation and make a mess that the next day's 15 minutes of tidying up will clear the area and leave it inviting me to create more. I'll let you know how that one goes. This all ties in nicely with a quote a friend shared with me recently that says something to the effect that busy people don't wait until they find the time to do things, they make the time. I tackled this art space organizing project that way - by asking where I could make the time. I actually have decided to trade the time I used to spend watching the evening news in on something more meaningful. I have gone on lengthy news fasts in the past and am not ready to do that now but I can give up the network news with no problem as the amount of news actually reported is negligible these days anyway. I won't miss it.
For now, the next order of five is to let these things go:
1. A pair of black dress pants
2. A pair of blue jeans
3. Another pair of blue jeans (they evidently breed when you're not looking)
4. A compact little umbrella
5. A very pink blouse with lots of beads and sequins and sparkly things at the neckline
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