So here’s the thing. I suffer from an illness called Jessimania. This means at random times I can go into full blown mania about something that is bothering me, needs to be fixed, or (most often) has been ignored so long that I can no longer stand it.
Unfortunately, Jessimania often requires a scapegoat. It can’t actually be my fault, and so I have to find something or someone else to blame. This generally sounds something like “I can’t be the truly artistic person that I want to be because I work full time” or “My house is always a mess because my husband doesn’t pull his weight”.
Reality is, I am not the truly artistic person I want to be because it is so much easier to watch Glee than to actually sing scales for an hour. My house is always a mess because I am a scatter brain who has more stuff than her brain can handle.
Yesterday, I found myself at home, alone, with a horrible bout of Jessimania building. My inner dialogue was getting darker and angrier over the pile of laundry that I volunteered myself to stay home and take care of. If my husband had come home in the midst of this, I think my thoughts may have actually struck him dead.
Luckily, I recognized the symptoms.
I stopped, took a deep breath, prayed fervently for a change in thoughts, put on praise music and began to figure out was really the issue here. Was it really about the pile of laundry sitting on my dinning room table?
As I thought about the person that I wanted to be, and where my life is, I found that there was a huge discrepancy and it was staring me in the face. My pile of laundry was a visible way for my failure to shake its fist at me and laugh.
You see, I want to live a mobile lifestyle. It is something that I have been working on. To have the ability to pick up and go. Just like that. The problem is that right now, I would have a lot of stuff to pick up. The laundry was a reminder that what my heart and soul craved was far from the reality that I lived. It was a reminder that I faced every week when I stare down that pile of laundry.
Also, I am horrible at doing laundry on a regular basis. So having a lot just means that I have piles everywhere.
So yesterday I declared war on stuff.
The stuff in my life that just gathers in piles, the stuff that is debris from a life that someone else is telling me to live. A lifestyle that encourages chains of credit card debt, more crap, and bigger houses to hold your crap, which of course means more cleaning to maintain your crap. A lifestyle that my soul screams against.
I started the campaign with my closet.
Here was my goal: to make my entire closet fit into a suitcase. It was something I had been threatening Paul with for a few years now. I started with our largest suitcase, and then felt as if it didn’t really require me to get rid of that much. So I downsized to our medium sized suitcase. I can now say that my entire wardrobe fits into this suitcase. This did not include a few fancy dresses, heavy coats and under ware, but it was done.
When Paul came home, there was only a single moment of questioning as to why all of my clothes were in a suitcase. Once I informed him of the process I had gone through that day, he was supportive. In fact, he let me do his closet next. I didn’t hold him to the suitcase requirements because he would wind up with 1 set of clothing, but I was able to reduce his closet size by about 50%.
I feel better already. Proud of myself for avoiding a meltdown, recognizing the problem and then actually taking action to change my lifestyle. It was nice to take the first steps towards closing the gap on that phantom version of myself that I see in the distance.
The pile of paperwork that has been migrating around my house is next.
Continuing the adventure,
Jessica Boctor
www.phantomblonde.com
Jess Boctor 