Tag: Planning

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Physical Purging Clears the Conscience

I don’t think I am a pack rat, right. But from a closer look at my office, I just might be.  On the surface, it is amazingly neat with lots of personality. From a swanky light on the wall, a globe that turns by sunlight or any kind of light, a gorgeous chair and desk, and a plethora of books relatively neatly packed in a custom-made bookcase, it is all here.

So, what is the problem? Books galore and notebooks and all the rest, so much stuff that I had a pile of books on the floor near my bedside table, and a few others scattered about the house here and there.  When Paul suggested that I give some of them to charity to avoid putting them back on our clean carpet, I went into a melt down and exclaimed quite loudly that he was out of order. Really, was a pile of books bothering him that much?

He looked at me rather quizzically and backed off.  I had won so I thought until about thirty minutes later when my conscience taunted me.

Fine I thought, I will find a small bookcase, a job that proved to be impossible. Though our bedroom is quite big, our house, a modern London townhouse, has minimal wall space and storage space for that matter.

Still, I persevered hoping to find a suitable piece of furniture to stick in the one empty corner of our bedroom. Delighted, Paul happily measured the space and reviewed all my selections. Alas, nothing worked.  Too tall, too dark, too handsome. You get the picture.

Back to the drawing board I went but this time to my office and sat in the middle of the floor, looking for space and then it dawned on me that I had a cabinet full of used notebooks, 23 to be exact, most of them Moleskin, and all sorts of old devices–an iPhone 5, two Blackberry’s, a Nokia phone, an iPad, a Kindle.  I could go on, but I won’t.

Furthermore, I noticed the open shelf beside the cabinet, crammed with all the UIO podcast scripts and mounds of papers from my parents’ estate (if you will), not to mention the rammed packed cupboard on the other side of the room, a part of the bookcase.  In there, I found two old manuscripts, and God knows what else.

Facing unrest from my subconscious, I was relieved when my rational mind reminded me what was at stake. Not only were most of the books good reads and some were my own and the works of friends and other cherished authors, but also the papers and notebooks were packed with memories, and the manuscripts were valuable, too, if only to me.

It prodded me to come up with a plan that would save the books, the memories and manuscripts and find a final resting place, if you will, for the items I needed to let go.

First, I gathered the notebooks and saw that more than half of them could be discarded, and the rest, still had a few empty pages to be filled. So back in the cupboard they went.

With the discards, I learned that Moleskin covers are not recyclable and all anyone on the internet could think to do was remove the paper and recycle it, which is the last thing I was prepared to do, after reading pages of personal dreams, actual nightmares, arguments and discussions which took place over the years. I laughed, even cried and thanked God I had not put some of those words out into the world.

Without hesitation, I got shredding what I could not recycle and began the search for a new home for the Moleskin covers. So far, I have failed at the latter, so they are likely on their way to the tip. Don’t judge!

In the meantime, the other precious items such as my parent’s papers and my manuscripts have found a new home in a box underneath one of our storage beds, with the rest of the manuscripts, while the old devices have made their way back to their originators or a suitable recycling outlet.

As for the books, I kept them all, every one of them but they are in their own happy spaces now on shelves in my office.  The day will come when I must let some of them go but for now, I have had plenty of purging, letting go of the old and embracing the new.  I like the space! My conscience does too.

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Planning for future you

Our latest podcast, On Personal Development, the last in our second series of UIO, the podcast for teen girls , got me reflecting upon my own personal journey thus far—the importance of gaining self-confidence and self-awareness early on in life, as well as finding role models.

And though I can’t pinpoint a place in time when suddenly I knew the importance of developing personally, I do remember how much I wanted to be a journalist as a teenager and what I did to get the show on the road, at least from a personal perspective. From reading the announcements at church as if reading the news on NBC to behaving like an investigative reporter when I truly had nothing to investigate, I took a rather naïve yet enthusiastic approach to pursuing my goals.

My family might recall that I always had a question for you no matter what the situation. How could they forget?

In my mind’s eye, all I had to do was hone my natural skills and for sure I would get whatever job I pursued. Peter Jennings, who dropped out of high school but still served as anchor of ABC World News Tonight from 1983 until his death in 2005, was doing so after all.

You see, though I was born in a different era, a different gender, a different race to Jennings, it never occurred to me that I might not have the same breaks, same opportunities that he had. And as it turned out I didn’t, but I did have the desire to pursue my dreams and the confidence to act. And while I didn’t end up on ABC, I have enjoyed some wonderful success as a journalist, a writer and now a podcaster but not without a challenge or two.

To this end, On Personal Development special guest Robyn Spens, a coach and rapid transformational therapist, points out that confidence is key, particularly when in an unfamiliar situation or facing challenges. Here, here to that.

I will never forget feeling as though I was going to drown during a re-branding project, which I was leading, as a major organisation’s interim communications director. And suddenly in a particularly confident moment, it hit me that I knew more than anyone else, even if I didn’t know everything. Thus, it was confidence that saw me through.

It really matters in developing one’s full potential, but it is not the only thing that matters. Robyn talks about the importance of nutrition and sleep, for example, something I am still getting my head around.

One thing that I have learned along the way is that personal development is for life, even if there are stages in life when some bits are more relevant than others. For example, when I first moved to New York, I knew very little about table etiquette. Sure, I knew the basics and had pretty good manners, but when I found myself at a posh event at Tavern On The Green, acting as publicist to the CEO of my organisation, things got really personal.

Since then, I have resorted to my investigative journalism skills. When in doubt find out. Check out On Personal Development for more hot tips from Robyn Spens.

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When a plan comes together

blog on planning and revision

All the talk about revising gets me thinking about novel writing or even podcasting. Sounds a bit far-fetched at first, right? But when you think about it, revising has a lot in common with such undertakings as creative writing. Not only are they both processes, they each require some level of planning.

Never mind those novelists and podcasters whose delivery comes like Johnny on the spot. They are exceptions to the rules. The rest of us need a plan, at least I know I do.

Sure, the ideas often come fast and furious, perhaps when I am running or even flying, but to develop them properly, I need a well thought out plan, which admittedly often gets chopped and changed along the way.

Arguably, the output is all the better for it. The difference between my first novel, Crossing Over, which never saw the light of day, and the actual third one, The Barrenness, which was my first published novel, was not only maturation and growth as a writer but also planning was in the detail, which meant employing writing techniques that allowed the plot to thicken, if you will.

Without a plan, I received a devastating result, a host of rejections, a vocational habit as a writer, but these were empty, without hope and questions about my abilities as a writer rejections—soul destroying.  For ages, I put the manuscript away, couldn’t stand to look at it. But years later when I did find the courage to pull it out and dust it off, not able to get writing out of my blood, I saw the error of my ways.

While some of the writing was good stuff, not all of it admittedly, the piece did not hang together as a novel. With a better understanding of novel writing, I re-wrote it, renamed it Preparing for Grace, and thanked my lucky stars that it had not been published as it was.

Someday, you never know. But for now, I have other plans, the biggest one is growing UIO: You Inside Out, the podcast for teen girls. In the meantime, I have personal plans too. One is to get more sleep. And you know what, when I didn’t have a plan my efforts were futile. But with a plan that includes signing off of all electronic devices two hours before I go to sleep, I’m catching some z’s. Now you know why I don’t answer late night messages anymore. Fair enough, right!

Of course, revising is a bit different to novel writing, but the truth is: planning is always in order, as long as it doesn’t become a distraction. The bottom line is this: planning means prioritising and being intentional about the task, whether it is writing, exercising, eating right or revising. So, what’s the plan?