Today I stayed up in the cabin and cleared out books and notebooks. My haul of books to give away ended up at only two boxes. I was a little disappointed. My half formed fantasy had been that I'd daringly use the 80:20 rule to weed out 80% of my books, leaving only the one out of five that give me 80% of the results. Sigh. So when have I ever been satisfied with 80% of the results? Anyway, at least I cleared some space.
Spring decluttering seems to be inevitable here. Once the weather starts to warm, yard sales spring up every weekend all up and down the highways. It must be a natural spring urge.
I had expected to throw away all the contents of my thick binders of notes from three Body for Life challenges. They've been on a high shelf, accessible only by household ladder, since well before I fell last year and broke some bones. I've wondered if my bones broke so easily partly because of the relatively high protein diet I did for about a year on the Body for Life program.
Instead of tossing them out, I found myself thinking "all this exercising was kind of exhilarating. I had a lot of energy. Why not do this again, but without getting so obsessive about it?" (This may be a contradiction in terms, but that's what I thought.)
I consolidated all the web design books into one place. At one point I had them all stacked on a table. The height of the pile was astonishing.
It seems odd that all the computer books are on the side of the room across from the computer, instead of right beside it. It would be logical to switch them with the books on art. But I don't want to do it. The bookshelves closest to the computer feel more important to me. And I don't want the computer books to claim that priority. So I'll just have to walk over there to get them when I need them.
This evening I used the new scanner to scan in two studies for a composition "class" on the Wet Canvas message board. I'm hoping it's not too late to enter into the ongoing interaction and feedback. The thread is about Hans Hofmann's methods of analyzing (and designing) compositions. Recently, after having read some books about Matisse, I've gotten intensely interested in Hofmann.
It's funny, because I know I looked at books on Hofmann two or three years ago without a spark of attraction. Yesterday I went to a local college library to see if they've bought any new art books of interest. No, not in the last two or three years! But I did find two books on Hofmann. I sat down with them for a while. Some of the paintings just blew me away. (How's that for erudite aesthetic response?) I came home and ordered one of the books. Then today I ordered a book on his teachings, written by a former student of his.
I guess you can tell that I'm just doing what I really want to do. I'm starting to trust myself more. Best of all, somehow I've begun to feel some basic sense that I'm going to be all right. It's a kind of solid knowing, "I'm going to be all right," that feels wonderful. I haven't felt it for so long. Six years? Longer than that, I think - more like seven at least. It feels great. At the same time, it feels perfectly normal, as if this is the way to feel all the time, naturally. Of course it is.
10:20:14 PM 
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