Nice Work, Skippy!

My husband is a master of organization. In fact, his doctorate in organizational behavior signifies more than just expertise in understanding how people behave in organized environments, or even how his wife deals with life in her vastly disorganized world; his acumen extends to precisely how objects should be organized in a pantry, to wit:

Whereas, I struggle with making ultimate sense of my bedside drawer, the piles on my desk….this web site.  I am like Skippy the puppy trying to round up a litter of kittens.  I can keep track of (most of) the moving parts all right; it’s just that I wish it all looked neater.

Anyway, Marc inspires me. I am trying to spiff my site up, so please bear with me as I do a little experimenting with format.  My blog accidentally disappeared for awhile and I couldn’t find it. It turns out nothing dies in cyberspace and I found it in an obscure file right here on the site, so I put it back on the homepage. The more I add to my site, the more I realize I still have to teach myself some technology basics.

As I try to work on this in my spare and stolen moments, a few thoughts came to mind, directed at people who like the idea of a blog but don’t know how to set up their own personal space on the web:

• I wish all my friends and family had one, because I love to keep up with people I don’t see enough of.
• It’s very easy to do this. All the directions can be printed from whatever blog site you are using. It’s very easy to learn as you go.
• A blog, even the back files that no one else sees, is a great place to keep and organize photos.
• You can keep the whole thing private or all or part of it password-protected if you want.
• Free web services like webnode, wordpress, blogspot, etc. have plenty of free space for occasional bloggers. Your site can live long after you do. That’s a big reason for me to do what I can to keep it up – there are people who have left this world whose blogs and ideas would have been very precious to me.  The experience would be much better than visiting a…you know. Grave :-(

In olden times diaries and journals filled the legacy bill, but that was then. This is Now. Now, now, now.  It is all about Now.  Didn’t you read Eckhart Tolle? The present is all that we have.  And, it’s all about the choices we make, but I guess that’s another book.

Speaking of choice, I’m glad I chose to follow through creating a blog as a New Year’s resolution.  Nice work...I didn't give up this time.  More importantly, though, is that writing about my major transition helped me to look more deeply and appreciatively into the world I’m in right now instead of getting too mired in missing the familiar places and routines of the past.

I hope I’ve made a convincing case.  Don’t know where to start? Talk about First Nations peoples, white owls, piano care and tuning, or your favorite recipes. Who doesn’t appreciate a great recipe?  Just post your photos, or start your own little “pinterest” type portfolio.

Focus on your loves. One of my favorite lines from Rilke goes like this, depending on the translation from the German; here the poet exhorts the reader to reveal things, anything s/he cares about,  even to “the angel,” and help that heavenly creature to appreciate  often-overlooked earthly objects that are treasures in disguise:

So show
him some simple thing shaped for generation after generation
until it lives in our hands and in our eyes, and it’s ours.
Tell him about things. He’ll stand amazed, just as you did
beside the ropemaker in Rome or the potter on the Nile.
Show him how happy a thing can be, how innocent and ours…

Love those lines. To me they mean that you, special person, with your unique regard of things, should reveal to the rest of us things that are wondrous!  The world is filled with them, we miss too much of it all….but as friends and fellow communicators, we can help one another to see and appreciate everything more. Even boring little things like ants, dust mites,and liver cells are rendered holy and interesting objects through someone’s vision, and the work of their hands and heart.

 I  hope you’re inspired. Give me the web address when you are ready, so I am sure not to miss it.  Let me know if I can link to it here if you want to share.  Be brave…if nothing else, remember through my own example that we can all learn new tricks.

Thus saith Skippy.