Winding Creek Circle

This week has been a real pain in the a**. Im still sick, my throat is so sore and I have no voice. Add to it is the fact we need to move out by mid-month, so Im slowly but surely trying to declutter stuff.

So while Im surfing the world wide web (it seems this is the only place I can ever get to surf in the next five or so years), I stumbled upon the Clutter and Creativity Quiz for artists.

So I tried it and scored a 28:

Your clutter could build to an unmanageable level if left unchecked. It might already be blocking your creativity in some ways. Now that you’re aware of it, you can work at increasing your awareness and applying some strategies to start clearing it out.

Here are some of the tips I gathered:
Clear the Clutter from your Creative Life

PHYSICAL CLUTTER
One simple method to get the physical clutter out is to create three piles (boxes are helpful), labeled: Give away, Throw away and Put away. You can add other categories if you like (i.e. recycling, repair). (I should really do this with our move!)

TIME CLUTTER
The clutter in our schedules can lead to a chaotic life while things just seem to “happen” to us.

To deal with your time clutter, just say “NO”. This is a muscle that might need some exercising. Put yourself and your creative pursuits first - just because you’re at home, that doesn’t mean you have to be available.

MENTAL CLUTTER

Sometimes the chatter in our minds is constant and difficult to decipher. Other times there are the same boorish and loud messages over and over again - messages like “You can’t do it!”, or, “You’re no good!”. All of them are distracting and make it much more difficult to hear our muse.

To quiet down your mental clutter, try writing. In the Artist’s Way, Julia Cameron recommends writing three full pages every morning. Find your own method - write to do lists, poems, lists of everyone you’re mad at, talk back to your inner critic, write about whatever’s swirling around your head. You can also write down questions for your muse - help with a particular verse or a request for general inspiration.

EMOTIONAL CLUTTER

Emotional clutter stems from the same pack-rat habit of not wanting to let go. Instead of hanging onto an old sweater missing a button, it’s hanging onto an old emotion. Once an emotion is over, it’s over, unless we choose to hang onto it. That’s a powerful ability we have - to either stay enraged, sad or anxious over something that happened three days ago, or three YEARS ago, or let go and give ourselves the freedom.

If emotional clutter has your heart tied up in knots, practice letting go. Forgiving someone doesn’t mean condoning what they’ve done. It means freeing yourself and being open to positive emotional experiences.

RELATIONSHIP CLUTTER

Sometimes we hold on to broken relationships for the same reasons we hold on to broken things: because we think they can be fixed (and that we’re actually going to take the steps to fix them), and because they’re familiar and safe.

The clutter in the rest of your life blocks your communication - it’s just too hard to listen with your whole heart when there are layers of clutter in the way. This affects your inner listening as well ? your ability to tune into your intuition, your “muse”. Stage fright is a BIG form of clutter.

To improve your relationship with your audience and combat relationship clutter, think about what they’re hoping to get from your performance - maybe to be transported by the music, to be inspired, to have their feelings put into words, to be soothed, to be “rocked”, to be energized or to be cradled. You have an enormous power to give them these gifts.

HEALTH CLUTTER

If we’re surrounded by clutter and chaos, things like eating vegetables or walking around the block just don’t seem do-able or important. And yet if we don’t take care of our bodies everything else becomes much, much harder and can lead to fatigue, illness, trouble concentrating, pain, addiction and weight problems.

To help hear what your body is saying to you, try keeping a record, for one week, of your sleeping habits, what you eat, when you exercise, and how you feel. Notice and record everything you can ? when you’re feeling tired, when a specific meal makes you feel overstuffed, and how you feel in the morning after going to bed at a certain time.