Hello 2013

This year, like every year, is the year I'm going to get my shit together, become responsible, and make the life I want for myself. As has been on the list for the past four to seven years, this will all be accomplished by decluttering all my stuff, getting out of debt, moving to a big city, finding a job I love, and generally becoming a healthy, nice, well-rounded person. I would feel like a lone failure for having the same new year's goals since the early aughts, if a little voice inside me weren't whispering that most people face the same problems every year. We change and grow, but often it takes a lot longer than 365 days for those changes to become permanent and satisfying.

I could be all zen about this and realize that I can let go of goals and still grow as a person, that changing my mindset is more important than checking off a silly to-do list, or that perhaps not everything needs to be perfect in order for me to be happy.  I say screw that; 2013 is the year I'm going to get all this crap off my to-do list once and for all, or die trying.

2013 will be the year I actually haul my cast-offs to the thrift store, instead of dedicating a corner of my house to piles of junk I no longer use. It will be the year I keep a job and stay focused on my budget so I can finally get out of debt. It will be the year I start being consistent in my writing and work to make money at it, rather than having little bursts of creativity every eight months, then wondering why I'm not more successful.

I'm confident that I can do these things this year because I'm angry, I lie to myself, and I've already changed my behavior. Let me explain.

I'm Angry
I feel as if I've wasted the last five years of my life on depression and anxiety and general laziness. It upsets me that I'm very dependent on the kindness of others for a place to live, food to eat, and even the internet I use. I hate that I've had the same goals for years, but never quite get them checked off my list. All of this has simmered on the back burner for a long time, but I think that pot is finally going to boil over. Rather than ignore my anger, work on managing it, or trying to stifle it, this year I'm going to use it. I'm turning it into a tool to motivate me, and a reminder to keep me on track.

I Lie to Myself
I used to tell myself little lies, like "I'll do it tomorrow, really", or "It's not that much money, I'll be fine", or even "They're a nice person, they won't hurt me again if I give them another chance". I've worked hard to stop hurtfully lying to myself, but I find that this is another negative thing I can turn into a positive tool. For example, if I set my clocks ahead by five minutes, I usually don't remember that I've done this. That way a lie past Kimber told helps present Kimber to be on time. I now tell myself "You just have to wash one plate and wipe down the counter, then you can quit", knowing that I'll be compelled to clean the whole kitchen after that. I get myself out of the shower in the morning by telling myself I can go straight back to bed; the lie works because once I get dressed after the shower I feel less sleepy.

All of those little lies add up to help me, but the biggest--and most helpful--lie I'm telling myself this year is that I'm twenty-seven. I'm  really only twenty-six, but for some reason being twenty-seven in 2013 sounds fortuitous, and I feel like I've gotten a bonus year. Twenty-six can be rolled into the ball of wasted time in my early twenties, and I get two years of being older, wiser, and more productive at twenty-seven.  It's definitely  odd that this comforts me so, but when I'm facing a long to-do list, a cold walk to the bus station, or a blog post I'm scared to write, I tell myself, "It's okay, you're twenty-seven, you're old enough to do what needs to be done, and confident enough to know that doing it will make the life you want for yourself". Honestly I think I sound a little bit like a Viagra commercial, but that's okay, because I'm twenty-seven, and if my truth sounds like a boner-pill, then so be it.

Behavioral Changes
I used to be a pack-rat who never kept track of my money and paid no attention to how my daily decisions affected my long-term goals. I still managed to go to school and keep a job, but as my depression worsened it all became too much. School and work suffered in part because I had no idea how much stress my lifestyle was causing me. It took years of effort, but I now have and use very little (not counting the mountain of boxes and bags of stuff I need to take to the donation center), stick to a responsible budget  (though I have yet to make enough money to cover more than the minimum payments on my debt), and take public transit as if I live in a big city. To make things easier on myself I pushed aside the accumulated debris of my previous life, but I've gotten to the point where I now need to deal with the backlog. This is overwhelming, and starting to bring back the same stress I had in my previous lifestyle. But, once I bite the bullet and get rid of the leftover debt and junk, I've already got the much harder-earned behavioral changes. Plus I'll have less to haul when I do move to the metropolis of my dreams.

Between these three things, I think 2013 is going to be a pivotal year in which I change my life for the better. Or at least get a hell of a lot of shit done.

Google Reader is My New Favorite Thing

The internet has things worth my time.

I used to spend hours on the internet going through a bunch of bookmarked sites that I wanted to keep up with. I don't know why I never tried an RSS feed, I just didn't. However, a few months ago I started using Google Reader, and I absolutely love it. I get all the content from all the sites I love, and I only have to go one place for it. Initially I spent just as much time keeping up with my favorite sites, but having everything in one place helped me better limit my reading time and cut out sites that didn't inform me well or bring me joy. Once I realized how to save time, it became an easy thing to do, and now I get to writing just as often as I read (which explains my recent return to the blog-o-sphere).

Another technological advancement that has saved me time? My Amazon Kindle. I can read books, magazines, and newspapers all on one device, it's easy and guilt-free to highlight things, and I can look up word definitions in seconds. This might be sad to admit, but I love my kindle (which I named the Kimdle) so much that reading regular books is actually tiresome. The Kimdle is easier to transport, easier to find things on, and so much more versatile than regular print media. While I'm a complete convert, my fiance likes his only for novels because he finds reference materials too bothersome to flip back and forth for.

All of this sort of got me thinking (and by sort of I mean I had to think of something else to say because this post is shorter and more self-indulgent than usual) about the value of technology versus the feeling of a physical thing that will show wear, tear, and love over the years of its life. The first thing that comes to mind in this somewhat tired debate is my favorite gardening book ever, Garden Anywhere by Alys Fowler. I have this in book form, as it's not published on the kindle. Over the years I've added notes, drawings, and addendums to the wonderful text that Fowler authored. I wouldn't dream of throwing  this book away, because of the amount of growth and living documented in it's pages. However, I've chucked a number of my other much-loved books as soon as I got them in digital format. The deciding factor for me is whether or not the object can serve as a journal of my life. The books that were passed down through my family and now belong to me tell stories outside of the printed words and pictures they contain. Other books, whose tales I love, but whose physical being tells no specific story, I have released into the universe, perhaps to become a loved prop in someone else's life story.

Ultimately, why we all read.

For me, the Kimdle lets me read more and in a better way. I have a  box of books and journals that mean more to me than they would to someone else, but I now mostly read on my Kindle because I can find material easily and quickly, as well as read through them with better understanding and interaction. Likewise, with Google Reader I can keep up with a lot more of what's going on in the world and in a lot less time. Rather than mourn the loss of analog and physical formats, I rejoice in how easy it is to find inspiration now, and compensate for my cold digital consumption by creating warm analog offerings of my own, like my garden,  homemade meals, knitted goodies, and little stories or essays, all of which, ironically enough, I share with the world through digital means.

When is Enough, Well, Enough?

Over the past year and a half I've set out to drastically and measurably improve my life. I read Unclutter Your Life in One Week, Getting Things Done, Writing Down the Bones, The Story of Stuff, The Total Money Makeover, The Joy of Less, The China Study, Garden Anywhere, Cesar's Way, and a plethora of cook books. I thought long and hard about what mattered to me and what didn't , and I worked hard to eliminate what didn't matter. I can honestly say that my life is more focused, fulfilling, and clutter free after this massive undertaking, and I am much happier with my life decisions and goals now than I was two years ago.

But honestly, it's taken me longer to get to this point than it should have. Some delays were out of my control: losing my apartment, a wet spring, my dogs getting into my food storage. Some things were my fault: not sticking to my debt reduction plan, accepting packaged food when I knew it wasn't what I really wanted, napping instead of writing. All of these factors aside though, the biggest delay in transforming my life into complete and utter awesomeness has been reading. That's right, reading.

You see, all the books listed above are the best in their category (at least in my opinion). I didn't learn that from fifteen minutes of amazon review research, or from trusted New York Times book critics. I believe these are the best books in their categories because I took the time to read at least a dozen books in each section. I've been so busy looking for the definite source for answers, the best way to do things, and the most comprehensive tome of knowledge that I've fairly frittered away the last year in searching for knowledge rather than employing it.

For example, after reading Garden Anywhere I had a quick burst of energy where I set up a compost bin and planted a few bulbs of garlic. Then eight months later I set about hauling mulch, pruning trees, and planting vegetables. The interim was spent reading a stack of other gardening books as tall as I am. I invested days worth of time into gardening research, and all I realized was that aside from Garden Anywhere, One Magic Square was really the only other gardening book worth reading.

I like to keep up on reviews, recommendations, and preferred reading lists, so in many of the categories the first book I read was the best one. In the case of Getting Things Done and The Story of Stuff I had to dig a little before I found my numero uno choices for each category, but I was only three or four books in before I found the best one. (And I do realize how silly it is that it took me four books to discover Getting Things Done, but for all its market saturation and tried and true methods I had honestly never heard of it before I saw it on the library shelf and thought to myself, "hmm, that guy looks like he's happy with his life, and I could use some coaching on how to get things done".) I'm sure that no matter what topic you're interested in, with only a little effort--half an hour or less--you can find the best resource for your field and toss all the other options out the window. But no matter how quickly I found my favorite book, I still kept looking for others.

I think this comes in part from the urge to buy new creative materials, rather than work with the ones you have. I know from experience that buying a new pen, notebook, or skein of yarn is much more fun than working with the stuff you have. The thing is though, buying new equipment is often a crappy substitute for doing the hard work it takes to be creative (disclaimer: I'm paraphrasing a quote I heard somewhere else. If I remember where I read this I'm happy to credit the person/genius robot who originally said it). Sure, a new notebook is pretty, but at the end of the day it doesn't really help me write better, and I'm out the money I spent on it. If you've carefully considered a purchase and are fairly certain it will improve your productivity, I say get it (I now know that Moleskines are the only notebooks for me), but if you're just trying to put off the perspiration of creation, then get your butt out of the store and back to your work-space.

I thought I'd mastered that concept a while ago, but it turns out that research can be just as insidious as shopping. I've spent hours online trying to find the very best chocolate syrup recipe, dog poop composting method, or e-reader. Even while writing this article I just took fifteen minutes to research Moleskine's new Star Wars special edition notebooks, when I really only needed to jump over to their site to make a quick hyperlink. Researching the best way to do something has become my new way of avoiding the hard work of actually doing it.

So I've decided that enough is enough; I want to spend my time doing, not just passively learning to do. I learned a lot reading about composting, but I learned even more by doing it. Same thing for knitting, organizing, cooking, training my dogs, and writing. I have two more months to reach my goals of a year and a half ago, and I'm determined to finish them. I'll still spend time on the internet reading interesting articles, but I want this to be comparable to the time I spend in the grocery store picking out my ingredients. Yes, it's good to find that perfectly ripe tomato, but at a certain point you just have to say, "Enough is enough, I've found a good tomato, now it's time to cook!"