One of Those Days

 By Charlotte Hinger

I don't understand days like yesterday. It was more Monday than usual, and to make things worse, today is Tuesday and it thinks it's still Monday. 

I've been pondering the colossal best seller by Marie Kondo, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up and decided I should write the Life-Changing Magic of Shoving Everything into a Huge Hefty Bag and Leaving It For Somebody Else to Deal With.

My life is basically the same. I do some things well and some things poorly. I have good days and bad days, but mostly my days are pretty satisfying and on the whole I'm a happy person. I have a lot to be thankful for. But I can't for the life of my understand how a simple bad day seems to carry over to the next. I think a good time manager would point out that I'm over-extended. I know I need to cut down, but even so. .  . .I wonder how the authors who are super stars manage to get it all done. 

Simplicity is appealing to those of us who are overburdened with the demands of our stressful societies and our plethora of electronic gadgets. Right now, I'm going through piles of paper and steeling myself to discard bunches. 

Then surprise! I realized some of the letters I had received from writers were important. There are three that might by valuable to collectors. Wouldn't that be lovely? It sure put the brakes on careless discarding. 

Kondo's book has a serene cover with a blue sky. It promises happiness. Serenity. A perfectly ordered house with everything in its place. There is a compelling narrative. The author, Marie Kondo, started down this decluttering path when she was in kindergarten. At the age of five, she could not wait to get home after school and begin organizing her things. It's her passion. She built a business out of organizing stuff.

She's the ultimate authority and very opinionated. No one else could have written from the same point of view.

But making a fortune from tidying up! Who would have thought?

This is a simple book. There is a lesson here for beginning novelists who complain that they are stuck in ordinary towns with ordinary uninspiring people. The greatest writers see the stuff of stories right in front of them. It doesn't take great adventures to come up with great fiction. And the same could be said of non-fiction.

Beyond being inspired by our ordinary life, but it's important, I think, to be aware of conditions that us miserable. What makes you NOT want to write. 

 I can only stand x amount of clutter before it drags down my psyche. I think I've hit my limit. 

It's time to finish the last few chapters of my new mystery and tidy up my book and my house.