Because I choose to

(Reposted from December)

The words of Neo in the final Matrix movie are somewhat immortal to me. They go with other timeless quotes such as "To thine own self be true". And they get at something that I think is at the heart of our very existence. The backdrop is Agent Smith fighting him, with mind as well as body. He has throughout the whole triology been telling Neo that "It is inevitable". And it culminates in this moment:

Agent Smith: Why, Mr. Anderson, why, why do you persist?

Neo: Because I choose to.

Because I choose to. These are the words that ring out and stand as a banner for everything we are and everything we can be. It is the admission that in everything we do there is, or at least at one time, there was a choice. We cannot control the world around us. We cannot stop the winds and the storms, we cannot stop the sun from rising, or force it to rise, but in ourselves, we are our masters. We choose what we do. This is the powerful gift, the divine gift of agency.

The whole point of the atonement is to give us the ability to raise from the ashes from our own bad decisions. It is to give us greater freedom to choose, and that one bad decision will not ruin our lives and destroy our ability to choose forever, but as we cling to that, that we may gain greater and greater freedom. If you look at any command the Lord has given, what appears to be a restriction upon closer inspection is a protection of that divine right to choose, a guide to help people stay away from those things that destroy agency, that impair choice.

It is not inevitable. Nothing is inevitable. We can choose, and we can repair our impairment to choose through the atonement. The consequences of our decisions are natural. Certain choices lead to certain consequences. The choice is the decision in the first place. We can choose anger and bitterness. We can choose strife. We can choose to love. We can choose to hate. Every moment of every day, we have a choice. Nothing is inevitable. We are who we are, we do what we do, because we choose to.

(Sometimes I need my own pep talk. Today, I found one for myself from myself)

I am getting rid of my trash can

I do this thing when my trash can in my kitchen gets super full, where I hang a plastic grocery bag from the handle of my sliding glass door, and put my trash in there, so I don't have to brave opening the big one, and can put off taking out the big trash. So I was thinking today about my trash can, and how I didn't want to take it out, but how I would probably take this small one hanging from my door out pretty soon. And then it just occurred to me. Why even have this big trash can at all? It is such a big bag, and things get so gross by the time it is filled that I -never- want to take it out. It would be oh so much simpler to just have this bag on my sliding glass door.

So I haven't talked that much about the ways I am embracing the process of minimalizing. But this is one way. Another way is getting rid of a lot of the boxes that I have. My ex always wanted to keep them around so we could use them when we moved? I don't really know why he wanted to keep them, but he wanted them, so we kept them. So as I was thinking about what to get rid of, these seemed like the natural place to begin.

I also donated my old gaming systems to DI. I am getting rid of a lot of my Christmas stuff that seems extraneous. I kept all my Christmas lights, though, because I love my Christmas lights! Getting rid of old pairs of shoes that I never wear, and a ton of clothes that I never wear, or only wear when I get desperate from not doing laundry for three weeks...ie if I didn't have them, I would for sure do my laundry, so that sounds like a better idea.

My first idea was the use fewer dishes, but I have not actually done anything with that yet. I want to gather all the dishes from all over the house, and my car...and wherever else they might be, before I pack them away, so I don't have to pack a whole ton away at once.

I am also getting rid of two duffel bags. I still have one super large one, and one week/weekend-sized one. I kept all of my camping stuff, though I probably could weed through some of that.

I went through my CDs, and got rid of most of the cases, and put them all on one of those spindly things. I also put the couple video games I have on there. I had my old laptop in my get rid of pile, but then decided I might want to see if I can revive some data from it. I'm selling a few things on ebay which will hopefully cover the cost of getting a separate battery charger, as what is dead about the computer is the power cord connection to the motherboard. Once I can get data off and wipe it, I will probably part with it, but there may be some pictures on there I really want. They may also be gone from the other time I wiped it. But I can at least get some old chat logs off of it, or find something of nostalgic worth that I have plenty of space for on my current laptop.

I still have a lot to go through, and lots of things to actually get rid of, instead of just being in the pile. I also have purgatory in my hallway, which is those things which I need to use in the next month or so or get rid of. They have to prove their usefulness. Not in the hallway, but also on that list is the massage table. I want to use it, so I should. I really want to give my aunt a massage. I got her phone number yesterday so I could call her sometime this week and figure out a time she might want to come down here so I can give her a massage. If I do that, then it is worth keeping. If I don't end up doing anything with it, it's not, and I should fix it and sell it.

I love the look of my closets, though. They are so empty. My dancing room has always been (since I made it so) one of my favorite rooms in the house. It is so freeing to be so empty. It is peaceful, it is fun. It has so much possibility. I look forward to having more of my house join that realm. And also for the feeling that I can manage everything I own, instead of it overwhelming me.

The Creation Before Creation

"For I, the Lord God, created all things of which I have spoken, spiritually, before they were naturally upon the face of the earth." - Moses 3:5

I have been thinking about this concept a lot lately, how things are created in some manner before they are created, how important that process is to the process of creation, how it takes both parts.

If I were to apply this to art, or writing, or whatever I do, I think of it as, creating things mentally before I create them physically. Especially in writing, it is the thought, and the mental concept of things, long before I even sit down to write. The time I most often create writing in that form is in the first stirrings of the morning, just waking up, my eyes still closed, and I am carried to a world, consider a world and the people, maybe something I'm working on, maybe something I was just dreaming about. But that is most often where the creation begins. It also comes right before I go to sleep, in that dreamy state.

But it also applies outside the acts of creations of art or things like that, and goes to the things as mundane as doing my dishes, cleaning my house, showering, what to wear. If I intend to do it mentally, and go through the process mentally, thinking through the steps it will take, essentially doing the task mentally, then I am much more likely to do it, to be successful at it. Not that it takes a supreme amount of time. You can complete the entire process of a task mentally in about 5 seconds. So it's not really like, planning out my whole life, it's just intending things before I do them.

It is also seeing the problems and the hitches that might come, that need to be addressed now, so that some thing may be done in the future, if it is not to be done now. It is a good pattern to follow, and I find success as I attempt to create before I create.

Reminding myself why I want to get rid of stuff

My house is in an oppressive state right now. It is funny, because my house is not usually overly neat, but there is always the solace of my empty dance room.

I began my journey of getting rid of stuff, figuring out what is important, and trying to get rid of the rest last night. Now my dance room is covered in stuff that I have to figure out how to get rid of. Part of me feels like it would be so much easier to just throw it back into my closets and forget it ever existed. The other problem here is probably that I am attacking two projects at once. I am canning food, and I was working all day yesterday also at preparing the 5-6 ingredients that need to be made from different things for these enchiladas I am eating today. So I have been doing lots of dishes, but they keep being piled up in the sink anyway, and I have been assessing what stuff I want to get rid of, taken two trips to DI, and my house still feels like a mess, and like it is covered in stuff.

I do love the view of my closet though. The one in my bedroom is practically empty except sewing supplies on my shelf. The one in my dancing room has my clothes, massage table, a few boxes of things, camping stuff, blankets, and cans of food. (I have not used the massage table in a while, but I hope to. My deal with myself is to give myself a certain date, and if I have not used it by then, then I will get rid of it.)

This is the sort of middle-math of my way of approaching problems, which is just to dive right in, without much plan, and just see where it goes. It will be nice when I push through, but now I am feeling a bit overwhelmed. There are boxes all over, and there are things where I don't know where to take them. Then I have my normal stuff kind of in disarray. If I cleaned my bedroom, I might feel better about the disarray of my dancing room. I could probably pick that up a little quickly. Yes, I think I will do that.

I'm just trying to think of moving right now, how if I don't get rid of this stuff now, I will have to move it whenever I end up moving. If I get rid of it now, I never have to deal with it again. It will also make doing my inventory easier.

But, it certainly does not make me want to buy new things. So I guess one thing has been successful. Just need to keep perspective. Things will be good. I will be headed where I want to be. This will all end up better than it was. The process is a bit daunting.

Spaghetti Sauce Giveaway

So I am making spaghetti sauce tonight, and I ended up with a last batch that will be just three extras, and so I was like, hmm what should I do with these? Kind of weird, because this is less than I planned on making for the year anyway, but I think this is all the sauce I will do. I'm doing lots more tomatoes, and everything else should store well for the winter. Tomatoes are easier to do, more versatile, and everything else that goes into spaghetti sauce I can store over the winter (onions, garlic, spices).

But anyway, so the thinking of these as extras got me thinking, and I decided I want to do a giveaway of one of the bottles of spaghetti sauce.

So, here are the rules:

1 - You have to be in Utah. (This is a local challenge, shipping this stuff anywhere wouldn't really make a lot of sense.)

2 - Have one meal where you know where everything in the meal came from. (This can depend on how you want to do it, but the grocery store is not an answer. If you are eating something processed, you can do a lot of research and probably find out where the different ingredients are grown, but probably easier is just buying some fresh food from a stand near your home.) I'm gonna make an exception with grains, because they can be hard to track down, but consider that a bonus.

3 - Come back and comment on this post with what you ate, and where everything in the meal came from.

4 - Enter before September 9th. The winner will be chosen at random of the pool of people who meet the qualifications!

(For anyone out of Utah, feel free to join in and comment, join the discussion and sharing the story of meals, but just know you won't be in the running for the giveaway :P )

And to start off, I'll share my meal.

Pasta:

flour - Lehi roller mills, which I assume the flour comes from Utah farms

eggs - from a farmer at the farmers market

Sauce

tomatoes - from Chavez farms and Stratton farms

onions - local farmer here in Provo

garlic - sold by this local farmer, but grown by an associate in St. George

peppers - from Jacob's cove, came with my CSA

salt - real salt from the ancient Sundance sea, here in Utah

beef - grass-fed beef from Redmond farms

spices & pepper - don't know, though I do know where to get some locally

Minimalism and Community

My sister and I went out on errands this evening, and we talked about a couple things that seemed worth talking about. I'll talk about the first, which is something I've been thinking about lately, just after coming across something on the internet, and just as I always think more about the simpler life of older times, and how I want that to shape my future.

I read this thing the other day about a minimalist challenge, which is to have only 100 personal items. I want to do something akin to the goal, but have not quite decided how I will bring it into play. I am sure I will document it when I actually go through the process, but for now it is just conceptual. I have aspirations when I marry again to buy a piece of land and with my husband build a home there. I figure what we will be able to build together will be modest, but nice. I've read about different methods that are easy to learn, and can be used easily to do most of the building, and the land is one of the most important things to me, because I want to be able to raise and process most of the food that I and my family eat.

But back to the challenge, so the idea is just to live with less stuff. I feel the appeal of this, and having my dance room, which is pretty much an empty room, which I do so many things in, and which my nieces find even more ways to have fun in, I enjoy the concept of empty space for creativity, and how less is more. I want to make it so that moving is less of a chore. I want to know what everything in my house is, and know that it is something I want to have. I actually was thinking toward this idea, but more abstractly, back when I created my list of 101 goals in 1001 days. One of my goals was to make an inventory of everything that there is in my house. I think it will be a lot easier to do once I get rid of a lot of my stuff.

And I know there are some things that I will not get rid of, but simply reorganize. Like I want to relegate most of my dishes to storage. I want to have more so that when I have guests I have dishes for them, but want to keep it to one plate, bowl, spoon, fork. Because then I will keep them washed. It will also make more room for my canned food in my kitchen, which is a logical place for it to be.

I am sure I will have a lot more to say about it once I actually begin the process. I wanted to tonight, but got busy socializing, which is always a nice distraction.

The second concept we discussed was independence, and the notion that things can be done on our own. As I began writing tonight, it made me think of my own writing. It is not my own. My non-fiction especially on this blog. I get ideas from so many places, so many people, from the things I read, from the people I talk to. It all comes from so many places. But even my fiction, it is inspired by so many other people, and as I have said, the characters that are just like me are the ones that bore me most (maybe that wasn't on this blog), and it's the one who seem like other people, real people that aren't me, that fascinate me, and that I love. And it is because they are the people around me.

There are so many people involved in our lives, and we are involved in so many other people's lives. I suppose this sentiment has been captured before in the phrase "no man is an island", but I think that is a negative spin on something that is beautiful.

We all depend and rely and affect each other. We are a vast community of people who are greater than the sum of our parts, because of what we do for each other, how we build each other up, how we spread knowledge, how we can lift and inspire and strengthen each other, and make each other better than we ever would be on our own.

I think of the simple act of committing to other people, to write 20-30 minutes a day, and just that system of support and strength, how it has helped me be more the person I want to be, to do the things I want to do. I am glad that I am so much more than just myself, but that all of it is me. I am glad that I can come to live my true potential, while keeping my own beautiful individuality, to be a part of community, and to be one. It is a beautiful thing to be an independent entity, but connected in a vast network that is humanity.

Every little bit counts

20-30 minutes doesn't sound like a lot. That is part of the reason I thought I could do this challenge. I don't really feel like I do very much each day. I've been working on my story, and it just goes on bit by bit, a page at a time. It seems like something I could have sat down and written all at one time. It is not overly complicated, and I pretty much knew where it was going for the most part. If I had a free day with nothing to do, I probably could have just sat down and wrote it.

But that is the beauty. I haven't had a free day. My day off my dad was here, and I was doing stuff with my family. Every other day I've been working. But the little steps add up, and my first story is coming together. But those little bits, piece by piece they are adding up, and I am coming to a later part in the story. I am no longer at the beginning. I know my characters better now, know this world a little better now, and things are happening. And all it has taken is just 20-30 minutes a day. Today I wrote more than that, but most of the other days, I have not written much more than that.

I look back with longing a lot of times on the days of early 2008 when I would wake up, and spend the day reading and writing. I would spend an hour in my different kinds of writing. It is when I wrote a few of the stories of people close to me. I had time, and I felt like I was just living the dream, and I was disciplined, and it was what I was doing with my life. Now I feel pulled in so many different directions, and feel like I barely get a moment to write. But I see it's adding up. It is working. I am moving forward.

Every little bit counts. In everything we do. Every little bit counts.