Evil Genius at Work

In knitting news, I have signed up for this:

This will require me to cast on a project during the opening ceremonies and finish it by the end of the Olympic games. I have committed to knitting a sweater (which I hope to wear on my vacation in April).

I think I can do this – I have chosen a simple pattern that should be a quick knit, but it will take a lot of my free time and I will need to knit on my lunch hours. Tonight I will focus on getting my work area organized for maximum efficiency!

Update (May 11): I did not finish for the Olympics, but I did finish the sweater in time for my vacation. It was a big hit with my fellow knitters!

Sooner or later, it seems, every aspiring minimalist asks themselves the question, “Why am I doing this?”

Yet again, Miss Minimalist has created a post that really got me thinking.

It can be easy to confuse what minimalism is and what minimalism can help you achieve. Some people want a minimalist environment or lifestyle so that they can be more productive and meet the goals they have set for themselves. This is great, and I’m hoping that minimalism will do the same for me, to a certain extent. But I am also hoping that by pursuing minimalism I will be able to clear away the extraneous clutter, commitments, and obligations that weigh on me. I find that if I set too many goals for myself, even if they are things I want to accomplish and look forward to doing, I feel trapped and obligated.

What if we look at minimalism as a rebirth of sorts? A way to start over with a clean slate. Do you ever catch yourself thinking, “If I knew then what I know now…?” If we distill our lives down to their minimalist essence, we can start over knowing what we know now.

Rather than setting goals and thinking about how your minimalist lifestyle will help you accomplish them, try getting to that place of minimalism first and THEN thinking about what you want to achieve. It may not be what you want now, and why clutter up your mind along the way?

A few years ago I was invited to a hand analysis party. When it was my turn, the analyst looked at my hand for a few seconds, then asked (and I’m repeating from memory here), “Do you find your mind going off in a million different directions at once? Do you have trouble getting to sleep because your mind is racing with idea after idea running through it nonstop? Do you have a lot of different interests, and trouble focusing on just one?” All my friends laughed, and I had to tell him this was all true.

I am chronically unfocused. I am easily distracted. Ooh! Shiny! I think some part of me sees minimalism as a way to clear the clutter from my life, purge myself of distraction, and finally accomplish the great things that this hand analyst seemed to think I could do because I have a “brain like a supercomputer”. Hell, maybe the first thing I could focus on would be figuring out what those great things are.

My favorite new blog post today is this one over at mnmlist.com. This is something even the chronically unfocused can do. Unfocused people like things spelled out in steps for them, because then they can do just one little bit and not be discouraged. I can say, “Ooh, I’m on step 3!” and know that eventually I’ll be able to do step 4, step 5, and so on.

Clutter is a distraction. My busy busy brain sees things around the house, or the office, and starts thinking about how that thing needs to be put away, or washed, or disposed of, or starts to reflect on the memory it conjures up. This is one reason why I prefer not to work at home – there’s always something that needs doing and I have never been able to tune out my surroundings. That’s why I need my surroundings toned down, I guess. Hmm, just now thought of that and it makes sense.

I think, for this unfocused person anyway, that minimalism is not only possible, it is necessary if I am ever to accomplish anything. I mentioned before that I have a busy life. I have a large circle of friends and a corresponding number of invitations and social engagements. I have a demanding job with firm deadlines that sometimes require late hours. I have a wide range of interests, and want to indulge them all. I KNOW I am not the only one. This probably describes a lot of people, maybe even you.

I don’t think these things are mutually exclusive. I think minimalism may be the answer for many busy, unfocused people to make it all work.

I originally posted this (well, something similar) on Monday, and will try to recreate it now. Who knows, maybe it will be better this time.

Once a year I engage in a practice I like to call Frugality Month. This started back in the mid-nineties after my divorce left me with a mortgage payment, a car payment, crippling credit card debt, and a low-paying job. Like many young people, I had been told that I should save money, but had never been taught to manage it. My parents were great money managers, but terrible teachers.

Anyway, after a particularly bad month I had to sell some jewelry and decorative objects to make my mortgage payment. That scared me, especially when I looked around my (jam-packed) house and decided that I just couldn’t bear to part with anything else, and had no idea how I would if I wanted to (this was before ebay). Oh, how times have changed!

I decided that day, which happened to be January 31st, that the only way I was going to get more money was to spend less money. In other words, live within my means. This sounds like old hat to us now, but this was 15 years ago and I’d never read a personal finance book in my life – were there any back then? I can’t remember. So Frugality Month started the next day – I ate out of my pantry and bought NOTHING that wasn’t absolutely necessary. At the end of the month I had a little cushion in my bank account and all my bills were paid.

I like to continue the practice, even though times have changed and I live well within my means, have no car payment or credit card debt, and have plenty to cover my mortgage and bills. It helps me refocus on my needs v. my wants, and my needs haven’t changed that much. I have to relax it a bit on the grocery front, since my partner and I agree that fresh produce is necessary for healthy meals. Also, now that it is no longer a necessity for financial survival, I can enjoy the process and make a leisurely analysis of my spending habits and where I can improve. I like to think of it as mindful spending – I generally don’t put a lot of restrictions on how or where I spend my disposable income, but I require myself to be aware of how I use my money and consider the consequences.

I would suggest a Frugality Month for anyone, or a Frugality Week if you find a whole month intimidating. A lot of personal finance writers recommend tracking your spending for a week or a month, writing down every penny you spend every day. Then take a look at where your money is going and figure out what you could cut out and how much you would save, and use that information to plan your budget. What a pain in the ass. Seriously. And at the end of that little experiment, that money is still spent. Gone.

I say, don’t spend it to begin with. Make a commitment not to spend on anything other than your bills, gas for the car or busfare, and minimal groceries. Carefully consider every penny BEFORE you spend it. Stay away from the places you know you have a weakness for. THEN, at the end of the week or month, look at the extra money in your account and actually SEE how much money you save not spending it on those things. Consider how your daily life and happiness were impacted by not spending, and be mindful of that as you budget or spend in the future.

I would love to hear the experience of even just one other person who tries this, and how it impacted their spending habits.

Knitting is not a hobby that lends itself to minimalism. Check out just about any knitting blog or forum and you will see posts and discussions about yarn stash and UFOs (unfinished objects) and yarn diets. I am no exception, although I have tried, truly tried, to limit my purchases over the past year. But knitters are like magpies, attracted not so much to glitter but to color and texture. Most of us have pretty good imaginations, and when we see a new or exciting yarn we immediately start imagining the possibilities, and we want to be the one to realize those possibilities, so we buy the yarn. Oh yes, we buy it even though it might be $20 a skein and we know in our hearts there is no way we’ll be getting to that project anytime soon because there are so many projects we want or need to get done first.

I am sure there are other hobbies that have the same risk. There are also hobbies that require very little space, but I don’t have many of those.

I will be attending a knitting event in April, and there will be yarn purchases involved, but other than that I will not be purchasing any new yarn this year. I am declaring a moratorium on yarn purchases for 2010. I need to knit down my stash, y’all. And how will I do that without getting sidetracked? I’m glad you asked, because that brings me to what’s got me excited today:

Stephanie Pearl-McPhee’s Personal Sock Club. Isn’t it fab? And look at her lovely, organized cabinet. Stephanie is a busy, busy woman with many commitments. I am just a busy woman. How can I make this idea work for me? Hmm…

I don’t want to knit 12 pairs of socks this year – I live in Houston and 12 pairs of wool socks just wouldn’t get worn, even though I belong to that same actual sock club she mentions and I do knit more wool socks than any Houstonian needs. But, I do want to get some projects finished and use up some of the piles of yarn taking up space in my house!

So, I will adapt her idea to my own needs. I have a big drawer and some large clear plastic bags I can use. I will go through my yarn stash and patterns, pull out 11 lovely projects that I think I can finish by the end of the year, and start my own personal knitting club.

This is a great idea for any kind of handiwork hobbyist – needlepoint, beading, crochet, sewing, etc. We all have projects in mind, but the fabric is in one spot, the pattern in another, the thread in a drawer somewhere, the canvas not purchased yet, whatever. So when we have some time to work on something, we run around gathering it all up, then realizing we’re missing something, and by the time we find that thing it’s time to fix dinner and nothing gets done.

With my own personal knitting club, a project will always be ready and waiting for me when I am ready for it.

I prepared and published a lovely post yesterday about Everett Bogue’s first ebook, The Art of Being Minimalist. That post was, sadly, lost last night when I obliterated my blog. This is not something new to me – after all, my previous blog was on JournalSpace, may it rest in peace.

Anyway, I downloaded the book yesterday, and hope to read it and post a review in the next few days. But why wait? If you have read Everett’s blog, Far Beyond the Stars, you know that he is an inspiration – daring and wise beyond his years. I have no doubt his book will contain more of the honesty and common sense found in his blog, so take a chance. But don’t waste any time – the first 1000 people to buy get a discount!

A valuable lesson was learned this evening. I updated WordPress, renewed my domain registration, and managed to completely obliterate my blog. Lovely. But… it gives me a chance to start over without all the clutter of the last two years. I found a cache that covers most of my January posts and I will work at getting those back up over the next few days.

Unfortunately, I lost the posts I created today, including a link to Everett Bogue’s new ebook and the post I had prepared to put up tomorrow. Sigh.

Tomorrow I will recreate what I can and start over with a blank page.