Purging The Physical Makes Way for The Divine
Our mind may be infinite, but our ability to manage it isn’t.
It is a happy, normal Sunday morning. One I have not experienced in many months. Today's post will be short as I just put pen to paper a mere two hours prior to my posting goal of 8:00 AM.
As my readers know, last year I worked with a personal coach to help me make sense of my current as well as make plans for my future life. One of the big tasks to tackle was to sell the home I had raised my three children in since 2009. I'm proud to announce that all three adult children have independently purchased their own homes in the last several months and are well on their way to building their own castles and securing their own futures. The home I sold was a 2 1/2 story Victorian-style duplex in St. Paul. Built in 1909, she had a red brick exterior, high ceilings, and, if you speak real estateese, "she had lots of charm."
The home served my family well. We occupied the upper two levels, giving us ample space to grow while at the same time renting out the first level, which provided supplemental income. All in all, it was the right choice at the right time. But as children grew up, graduated from high school, and then college, the property transformed from the place we called home to the place I called work. Having moved out of the home and attempted to run it as a true rental business made me the "super" of that property instead of its loving owner.
Rather than walking up a level to fix a dripping faucet or running toilet, I drove across town. Suddenly, I found myself mowing two yards, snow blowing two driveways, and playing handyman to two locations, all while doing my day job as a CFO of a growing restaurant group. As would typically happen, I'd be walking into an important ownership meeting, banking meeting or staff meeting, and I would get a text from a tenant with some issue that needed resolving. The burden of maintaining that property, while at the same time attempting to advance my career and work on my writing, took a toll. Over these past six months, there was not at least one weekend day per week I’d spent at that property performing maintenance and repairs. The politics of St. Paul with their insatiable appetite for property taxes while at the same time imposing rent control continued to whittle away at any financial incentive I may have had to hold onto that property.
So as one of the major goals that came out of my work with a personal coach last year, I sold the property two days ago and this weekend was the first in many months that I did not have to attend to my "second job." Once I put some time between the emotion of selling my home to the reality of where I am going, I will offer a dissertation as to why the timing was right for me to sell that property when I did.
One of the challenges I faced in recent weeks, other than the $1000 per swing game of "Truth in Housing" whack-a-mole, was moving out of the home I occupied for 15 years. As one could imagine, a home that saw dozens of tenants as well as the raising of my three children, accumulated a ton (literally) of stuff. The home had a 1,200 square foot, unfinished basement, an attic over a two-car garage and more storage closets than you can shake a stick at. When I moved into the home, I moved a truckload of unopened boxes from my prior home's basement - boxes that originated from the home before that. On top of that collection of boxes, my children inherited a truck load of boxes from their maternal grandparents. The weeks leading up to the eventual closing last Friday left us no choice but to tackle the clutter that accumulated in that home. Boxes were emptied and contents replaced into three distinct piles, keep, donate, or demolish. I spent over $1000 delivering multiple trailers full of “demolish” to the local garbage dump. Goodwill received boxes of clothing and supplies spanning the last two decades and some items were reboxed and sent to the recently purchased homes of my children.
What became apparent to me as I purged the physical memories of my life, was the experience was not unlike the aggravation of driving halfway across town to fix a clogged toilet, the added stress of accumulated stuff was taking a toll on my mental state. I believe living among physical clutter can exacerbate mental clutter. When my mind is preoccupied, like a board room full of executives with ADD with a box of released squirrels, I cannot focus on my best self. I cannot be the best leader, best father nor best writer.
Significantly, decluttering my life makes room for other pursuits. I have writing projects that are backlogged by months. One such project is completing my series "Almost Paradise." I desire to expand my Substack channel to two posts per week instead of one. I am also in the middle of writing a second book on restaurant management featuring how to grow a business. Most importantly, decluttering my life, first physically, and hopefully mentally, makes room for contemplating the Divine. Most of my recent prayers and meditations have been asking for perseverance. I very much look forward to spending those morning meditations focusing on the beauty of the people, places, and events in my life. It certainly seems more enjoyable than storing dusty boxes of memories in a 100-year-old basement. I shall let you judge if my future writings emulate this desired change in mental acuteness.