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I am not a neat freak. In fact I am very much the opposite of a neat freak. There are times when my apartment looks as if it’s been ransacked. There may have been episodes when well-intentioned friends have thought about calling child protective services to save me from myself. For the record, I’m not even close to being featured on a episode of Hoarders. I just have a tendency to treat my entire living space as a locker room/office. Clutter isn’t exactly a bad word in my housekeeping vocabulary.

I tend to think the clutter serves a purpose. It gives me a tangible way to procrastinate. I’ll start writing that story after I take care of the laundry. I’ll get to that workout after I clean up the kitchen. I promise to cut down on my processed sugar after I finish up this box of Booberry cereal.

But after the laundry is done, the kitchen cleaned and the marshmallow breakfast consumed, I’m still faced with the original problem — beginning again.

Every day is a new beginning. Every moment can be a new beginning. An empowering affirmation, right? Hell no! It can be damn scary. I have to start over again? I have to begin again? Beginnings don’t get easier. But they carry plenty of opportunity. Sure, it all seems easier when things like gravity and momentum are in your favor and you can just coast along your merry way. But coasting doesn’t provide much of respite. In fact, it make your next beginning that much harder.

Over the weekend I started re-reading “What We Ache for: Creativity and the Unfolding of Your Soul” by Oriah Mountain Dreamer. Her discussion about beginnings got me thinking.

“We have to let go of our ideas about ideal conditions for beginning if we are going to start.”

“To engage in any creative process, to live each day fully, we have to find our way back to the willingness to begin again and again.”

And my personal favorite:

“If you are boring yourself, stop.”

It’s a stormy Monday in the Northeast which makes procrastination even more desirable. But if I let go of my ideal conditions, if I’m willing to begin again and if I engage in what brings me joy, then possibilities open up. So bring on the work assignments. Yoga class. A home office stacked high with papers and half-started ideas. It’s time to begin. Again.

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