springtime plans

just returned from a lovely weekend holiday away in stinson beach, north of san francisco. being the sort who gets a lot out of time away, even just recently having returned from my european adventure, i am now humming with ideas i want to move forward on.

priority number one: there needs to be a lot more boggle being played.

image: caroline donahue for remabulous.

while out and about, i was able to remember what i loved about living in the bay area. it's beautiful, for one, and around every corner there seems to be a better view than the last. i miss that because l.a. doesn't dole out its vistas nearly as evenly.

los angeles is a pretty externally fixated city: you are what you look like. san francisco, on the other hand, is an internal animal: you are what you can handle processing. this is true to the extent that people believe that there is a permission in san francisco to let it all hang out that there isn't in other places. sometimes i really miss this introspection, and other times i am relieved to be away from its unrelenting gaze.

what i find is most helpful is to think of my current phase as a sort of spring cleaning of my life: of relationships, clothes, mental attitudes, and limiting structures that have held me back up to this point. this has lead to a garbage bag full of ho-hum and past due clothes being shown the door. and on a deeper level, conversations with friends i don't see nearly often enough in sf helped point out some things that i want to clear out of my head as well.

this is a good practice to undertake on a yearly basis. asking questions like "how am i thinking about this?" and deciding whether those thought patterns are serving can be a huge relief. i found myself backed into a mental corner that was horrible for the better part of last week, until i unraveled what was holding me in that place and was suddenly liberated from worry that had been sitting on me for months.

these clean-outs periodically create more chaos as they are underway. i know when i pull all my books off the shelf and reorganize them by category and author (no one said i wasn't a big dork) there will be a mess all over the house. but thinking ahead to the relief of being able to find what i am looking for when i need it is certainly worth any temporary discomfort. think of it as mental reorganizing, and it won't feel so scary. and when you drop a limiting belief, it feels just as good as literally taking a big stone off your chest.

what are you willing to put down today?

Comments

[kristen]

Glad you got to mentally reboot!

I have a post up on My Back Pages today that you might relate to. I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on it since I know you are a compulsive list-maker...

[lillie]

i love this post and feel it too. even without the usual cycle of seasons here in LA, there is still a sense of new life with March here and spring coming. cheers to spring cleaning!

[caroline]

thanks, ladies, for your thoughts! i am somewhat still in shock that we are this far along in the year, but if it helps me to move myself along then so be it.

kristen- i will look at that post and am sure already i will relate to it as i have become not only a listmaker, but a multi-media list maker at this point.

lillie-
am so glad to heat you are excited by spring. can't wait to hear what adventures it inspires you to undertake...