Musician's Widow

I’m sitting here watching one of the latest episodes of the show Hoarders. The show shines a light on an issue that I think more people deal with than any of us realize. I would have never have called myself a hoarder, exactly, but I think I could have been considered something of a “packrat” at times.

Five years ago this weekend, Hurricane Katrina made landfall and caused extensive damage in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. I worked at a newspaper at that time, so I went back into my archive of articles written while I worked there. Ironically, the way our schedule landed, my column for two days after Katrina hit was entitled, “Cleaning out the clutter.”

An excerpt from that column:

I’m a packrat, and I admit it. I have a lot of STUFF in boxes all over the place, and I’ve recently began a massive project of going through all the boxes with the hopes of throwing things out.

I’m not doing too bad, as bag count has now hit around seven in this on-going project. Five of those bags were thrown out this last weekend.

Is there really any reason to still have a dress code for the school district I attended from 1987? What about a coupon for a free pizza that expired in 1998?

I have no idea how all of this stuff has accumulated over the last 25 years, but it has. My need to save everything under the sun is quickly going out the door along with a receipt for CDs purchased back in 1995.

[Read the full article here]

I think my biggest problem is my need to save receipts and statements. I’ll end up saving them for years and then doing  a mass shred/clean-up like the one I wrote about in that column. The problem is that I don’t save them in files. I have a great filing system set up! I just don’t USE it properly. It all goes in a box that then ends up in a bigger box that then gets shoved in a closet or under a desk.

I do have a method to my madness… generally. My husband tolerates it, but I know he’d rather see more paper clutter get out of the house all together. I’m trying to consciously change here and there to make my collection of receipts, etc. diminish.

I have a lot of books collected. I still have most of my college text books that some days I think I should have tossed. But I’ve recently discovered a need for some of those books. I’ve wanted to go back and re-study things I learned in college, and I am glad to still have those around.

I don’t buy CDs much any more. I do if it benefits a friend, but otherwise I’ve moved away from that. I’m still proud, though, of my nice CD collection. They’re all pretty old by now. Several of them I am sure are scratched. But they are fun to have to show how my musical tastes have changed over the years.

Past that, I have a few boxes of random items that I don’t need, but I’ve just never been able to bring myself to throw away. It’s these random items that makes me feel compassion towards the people on the show Hoarders. Sometimes, you can’t explain it… you just want to save something.

I don’t think I could ever be a full fledged Hoarder. If anything, over the last few years I’ve grown to love keeping things neat. I like to clean out my closet every few months. I have found a peace over my home exists when things are kept in good shape.  I can’t imagine living in a state of constant clutter, in a state of constantly being dirty. I need to vacuum. I need to sweep and mop.

I am a paper-clutter-pack-rat. And I admit that. But I vow its never going to go anywhere past that.

On the internet, you can be anything you want to be. It’s exactly what makes Brad Paisley’s song “Online” so humorous and true. I could tell everyone that I make thousands of dollars from home, have a weekend cabin in the mountains, and my husband works for Britney Spears.

However, NONE of these things are true.

As I skim through web-sites of various people, I find myself wondering on occasion how truthful are the things I am reading. Especially when the site is void of direct links or photos of the claims. Claims such as being published in countless magazines and on countless sites. Claims of meeting and interviewing celebrities. Claims of making thousands of dollars without even trying.

I ultimately wonder if the person is claiming to be more than they truly are. Many of the claims are laughable enough that you know inherently they are not true. However, in this more-is-better world, I also wonder if exaggerating claims is the only way people can be taken seriously. Its something that perpetuates and justifies the lies told in flashy sites and pretty words.

This leaves me overwhelmed and confused on how to proceed for myself. I never want to be anything but truthful in all of my endeavors. I fear sometimes the truth could end up undercutting my potential, because the truth is so often black and white, with no shades of gray. Then I remember:

I am more than I think I am.

I am the sum of my successes and my failures. I am my family and my friends. I am my experiences, my beliefs and my faith. I am honest. I am confident. I am scared. I have a lot to give, and I’m working to make my own opportunities to do just that.

So what if on paper, in black and white, I haven’t had anything published in a few years. It doesn’t make me any less qualified to be a writer. So what if I don’t hold a degree in graphic arts or creative writing or web design. It doesn’t make me any less capable of experimenting in all of these categories. So what if I never took a photography class. I have a Flickr account full of good photos that I’m proud to share with others.

July has been a rough month for me, and we’re not even half-way through it. I’ve lost a beloved pet, and a couple years of financial stress has finally caught up with me tenfold. Its all left me with a few cracks in my confidence of self, but my determination has doubled. Something that I think will carry me through. Something I KNOW will carry me through.

I’ve never been someone who gets knocked down for long. I assess a situation and proceed in ways I feel to be most logical and that will provide the greatest success rate. I’m not afraid to work. Just the opposite. I like to work. I just firmly believe you should always try to work smarter.

Life’s not black and white; there’s always more to the story. It’s precisely what I love about writing — finding the story behind the cold hard facts. I’ve been giving myself pep-talks the last couple of days, reminding myself there’s more to my own story…

There’s more to everyone’s story, and there’s no need to embellish it. Just be honest with yourself and your peers. Believe in yourself, and your success will happen.

Its 4 am.

Yes, you read that right. 4 am. This is not an unusual hour for me. It’s about bed time, I suppose, and I write this from my bed. Quality time with my blog tonight, I guess you could say.

I’m a night owl. I am sure many people think this fact is due to my having married a musician who is, by profession, a night owl himself. However, I think a big part of why my husband and I ever hit it off is the simple fact that I’ve pretty much always been a night owl.

I remember back in Elementary school, I was baffled about how none of my classmates knew that at 10:30 pm, after the news, M*A*S*H came on for half an hour. Bed time was always after that show, of course, but it was perfectly normal for me to stay up to watch the show!

My classmates were all in bed by, I assumed, 8 or 9 pm. Me? I’d be up until 11 pm, mostly because there was no point to my going to bed any earlier. I wasn’t going to sleep anyway!

In high school, I was introduced to After MidNite with Blair Garner while I did homework. IF I was done with my homework, I’d still lay in bed awake until all hours listening to the radio host’s antics. If there was an artist I was really interested in being interviewed, I’d be awake until 3 am easily… waiting to hear the interview.

Now, all this being said, I’ve never been a morning person. I can remember in Elementary school, I’d get up and have cereal for breakfast. I’d build myself a fort out of cereal boxes around my bowl in an attempt to keep the light out. I already didn’t think the day should even consider starting before 10 am. At the earliest.

Somewhere along the way, I learned how to live on about 4 hours of sleep. I did that through most of college. Go to bed around 3 am. Get up by 6 or 7 am. Drive to 8 am classes. I kept this schedule up into my job at a newspaper… staying up late, though, to talk to a guy instead of to do homework.

I married that guy.

I moved to Nashville.

My night owl-ness got worse.

You can ask most of my friends here in Nashville. This fact is not unusual. It’s almost a, “Welcome to Nashville,” phenomenon.

However, its not when we go out, or if I pick up a night working downtown at the bar, that my being a night owl takes a ridiculous turn. While I’ve driven home from downtown while the sun rises, its actually when my husband goes on the road that I stay up super late. You see, sunrise offers me some sort of strange security blanket. Its like the first rays of light bring with them this sense of safety. Like I can relax and go into that vulnerable sleep-state.

I sleep as the sunrises. I wake as most go to lunch. Some days, I wake as the school bus drops off neighborhood kids. I have coffee and cereal, as they have candy bars and cokes. This is normal for me.

I try hard to adjust my schedule from time to time. I miss daylight, and I force myself up by 10 or 11 am. However, I often still stay up late after that… and I find myself sleeping even later than normal the next day to compensate! Its at times like that, that I realize that sometimes its not worth fighting the body’s natural clock. I’ll fight it when we have kids. For now, I’ll just stay a night owl.

It is what it is. And what it is now… bedtime.