This Shouldn't Be Difficult

I'm wearing an old orange sweater with blue stripes and worrying about it. I haven't worn it all winter as it has been buried under other clothes on a closet shelf. Last week, working on minimalism, I pulled the clothes down and each day have worn something from there to see if it's worth keeping. I eliminated one sweater without even trying it on and kept two others right away. Today, however, I'm stuck in a ridiculous quandary over this sweater. I've been thinking for hours about keeping or discarding it. Like I have nothing better to do.

The sweater is comfortable though a bit baggy and long. The cuffs are not elastic, so I can't push the sleeves up as I like. Obviously it should go into the bag of clothes to donate. Problem solved. Except...

Except for "use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without."

To get rid of a sweater I bought, especially if it's still of use, is not at all frugal. Sure, it's not perfect, but it's not bad and it works. Getting rid of it would be such a waste.

This is the fine line between minimalism and frugality, not at all unlike the quandary in Spinal Tap:

David St. Hubbins: It's such a fine line between stupid, and uh...
Nigel Tufnel: Clever.
David St. Hubbins: Yeah, and clever.

I'm in this mess because I pulled down a pile of clothing, things I haven't worn in a year and found I've got too much stuff. Even without this one I have too many sweaters. This isn't a difficult decision. Come on already.

I'll put it in the donation bag and I'll feel some regret, not for any sentimental attachment to the sweater but for a sentiment about making do and using things until they wear out. But mostly I think I'm trying to escape a mistake.

I bought the sweater and other clothes when I already had too much clothing. That was a mistake and it won't erase the mistake if I make another by hanging onto something I don't need. It will just be a burden.

This shouldn't be that difficult but it is for me. There is so much stuff weighing me down right now. Some of those things are things I've bought that I haven't needed and which I don't use. More of it is the job I'm quitting and questions I have about what comes next. Too much clothing, too much depression, too much anxiety. I need to let some things go and a sweater is an easy place to start.

It may be that I'm assigning more importance to keeping the sweater than it deserves. In all the confusion about my present and future, it's sometimes easier to obsess over an old orange sweater with blue stripes than apply for jobs, write a book, or figure out finances. I can (eventually) make a decision, donate it, and move on to the next piece of clothing.

Maybe other things can be settled so easily.

Talking Mostly To Myself

I often worry that it seems I'm preaching here. That or trying to prove how wonderful I am. Preaching turns me off to Twitter and people being wonderful is reason enough to leave Facebook. These aren't things I want to be doing in my writing so sometimes I end posts by saying I'm mostly telling myself whatever the post was about. One way I learn is by repeating things to myself until I believe.

Many times I recount experiences I've had or that someone else described to me. This doesn't mean I'm perfect (ha!) or the other person is some kind of guru. It's just that I found whatever happened interesting and want to share. It's that way with phones this week.

I'm reading Cal Newport's Digital Minimalism which is good. I would say it's great, but I've read a lot on this subject before. I imagine it would be an eye-opener for anyone who hasn't been thinking about distractions and focus as much as I have. Reading the book does have me changing things on my phone and the ways in which I use (or don't use) it.

Last night I set the phone to go grey-scale and block all notifications and calls from 8 pm until 7 am. I also set time limits (through an Android app called Digital Wellbeing. I'm trying to make my smartphone dumb and uninteresting. The effects so far have been encouraging.

According to Digital Wellbeing, I use my phone for about an hour and a quarter each day. That's a start but is still disconcerting because I'm losing over an hour to it every day. That's time I could write, enjoy my family, walk, or run. I'd like to get phone use down to half an hour or so. I'll keep at it.

I'm also leaving the phone at home when I go out with family. They each have phones should we need them, but not having mine keeps me from looking at it and in the midst of my loves. Why check email when I've got my daughters and wife right there? I mean, duh.

I'm an amateur at this and there's no telling how long I'll stay with it. The master is: my friend Jerry. I emailed him about getting together at the Carrier Dome for a basketball game. I included a link to a map and told him if he had trouble finding where to park, he could give me a call. He became my hero by saying:

"Much obliged for the map, which I'll use. I don't carry a phone, so hooking-up will be clunky." (emphasis mine)

He did have trouble parking but asked people and got where he needed to be. Watching the first half, I scanned the seats and there he was. At halftime I walked around to where he was coming up the aisle. There was nothing clunky about our embrace. We talked for fifteen minutes and neither of us looked at our phones. We were too busy being together.

Again, I'm writing this down so I remember that a phone is just a tool, not the centerpiece of my living. Do with that information as you will.

Inbox Control (or lack of same)

Minimalism is a pursuit. I'm in the back of the pack. Working to clear my inbox I found myself opening tabs willy-nilly and seeming to get nowhere. Marie Kondo would be ashamed.

Getting my email read this morning has been an hour's work and then some. Part of it is to be expected. I'm home with my daughter who hurt herself yesterday and am happily distracted by her. That and almost every message either deserves a response or inspires me to think of things such as writing this.

Paul Jarvis's newsletter says that he treats work like driving: he doesn't text or get distracted while driving. I like that. I like it a lot. But in the middle of this paragraph I got up to get my girl ibuprofen, put dishes in the machine, and check two messages that came in on my phone.

I have several other newsletters in the inbox. They are like issues of The New Yorker piling up, leaving me gasping for time to read them all instead of just skimming the cartoons.

I need some kind of systematic approach. There are eighteen emails in my inbox. I'm alloting fifteen minutes' work on that while chronicling the results here. Can I be both efficient and thoughtful?

I begin with an email leading to a comment from Jerry on the blog. I posted this reply: I'm writing about going through my email inbox, trying to be efficient, maybe ruthless, but also thoughtful and open. Your comment here, for which I received an email notification, has led, as so many things do, not to a completed task but a happy desire to read more. It's almost like I'll never be done. Hey, there's a good idea for a bit of writing.

A message from Syracuse Stage said I'll soon receive information about the upcoming season. There's thirty seconds of my life lost. Archived.

Austin Kleon's newsletter led me to one of his posts and, God help me, a long article I want to read. I opened post and article in tabs and archived the newsletter.

I archived Syracuse University's note about post-season tickets knowing another will come tonight. Buh-bye.

Also archived was a note from my wife about which we argued this weekend. We've archived the argument too or snoozed it for later. We only argue about important stuff and often take weeks to work through. Thankfully, we don't hold grudges for long and I finally learned it's possible to be angry and still feel deep love. She knew that all along.

Next was the copy of my own newsletter. I posted a link for that to Twitter, though I'm not sure why. I closed Twitter before I lost myself to it.

I resisted subscribing to receive a Zen Quote Of The Week after enjoying one my friend sent. Isn't less more according to Zen philosophy?

Instead of fifteen minutes, I took eighteen and went from eighteen messages to eleven but have eleven tabs open in my browser. I'll take fifteen minutes to clear some of those.

I closed Android Messages and my copy of the newsletter within fifteen seconds.

The Austin Kleon post was one I read earlier this week. I'm grateful for the Vonnegut quote, James Martin's three simple ways to be kind, George Saunders quote about kindness, Roger Ebert late post, and more, and could linger with that post for a long time. It would be nice if my posts were as useful. I closed it and moved on.

I closed my blog post to which Jerry had replied by quoting Thomas Merton. Then I sent Jerry a link to an Alan Jacobs post about Merton and closed that tab too.

Then tabs left were all long pieces. I started with the Brainpickings article Jerry suggested. It includes this:

...that the things we pursue most frantically are the least likely to give us lasting joy and contentment, but there are other, truer things that we can train ourselves to attend to in the elusive pursuit of happiness.

My time was up then and good thing since I'm rethinking the idea of cleaning my inbox, closing all the tabs, being done. It's almost like I'll never be done. Hey, there's a good idea for a bit of writing.

Living is a series of complications. There is time to be ruthless, efficient, and dogged. There are times to let the river go by. "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio."

It turns out that I have my dream inbox anyway. Not inbox zero, the completely organized and productive life, but one that is filled with the messages of friends and strangers that have me wanting to know more, to keep going, to respond in kind. I have eleven messages still waiting, calling to me from my inbox and three tabs waiting for me to work through those articles. It's okay. This is the good stuff.

But you know what's the great stuff? It's my daughter calling to me, asking me to come sit with her while she recovers from injury. It's the easy way in which I abandon the quest to be done and remember to go live my life.

Isn't It Romantic?

Alan Jacobs is a good thinker. In this post he's describing the decline of baseball's enjoyment as the game becomes much more efficient and business like. This is Moneyball, pure and simple. Jacobs isn't demanding that Major League Baseball go backward, and he doesn't use this word, but I bet he'd be okay with a lot less business and a return to romance.

I was reminded of this New York Times piece by Tim Wu, "The Tyranny Of Convenience" in which he questions the notion that convenience is even a good thing. I like that he uses the word tyranny in that title. Again, we sacrifice romance for convenience, profit, and efficiency. In the process, more often than we might like to admit, we lose.

Romance? Really? That's what we're after?

I know, I know. It sounds hokey, but consider for a moment the best things in our lives and they will all have to do with romance and romantic notions. All our higher order ideals are romantic, characterized by, or suggestive of an idealized view of reality. Jacobs is admitting that players, owners, and the league itself are all within their rights to want more money, but there's nothing romantic about that idea. Wu understands the desire and need for convenience, but the romantic idea it would free us from drudgery and lead to utopia is belied by the convenience of email, texting, and Slack. No romance there and certainly no utopia.

Yesterday I wrote about my desire to be a writer. Not a teacher who writes or an anything else that also rights, but a writer. There might not be money in it and the process will be inconvenient as hell for my family. But I'll tell you one thing: it's romantic as all get out and I'm in love with that.