BABY STEP – bye bye junk!

Notice to the Universe:
I’m kicking butt!

Notice to Mizz Law of Attraction:
I’m making room for abundance.

Even if I didn’t publish my “Notch #3 — BABY STEPS / Week of March 1 to 7″ post, I stuck to The 12-Notch Plan and to my goals for the month of March. Photo proof: here’s what I’ve eliminated from my storage facilities.

This pile represents approximately a quarter of the stuff that needs to disappear. Tomorrow, I’ll bring some of the items to the local friperie (our version of Goodwill). Tuesday night, I’ll put the rest — i.e. garbage — out on the sidewalk.

MODIFICATION TO THE PLAN

It was getting redundant, all these posts — at the start of each week — about what baby steps I would be taking, and then the following posts — at the end of each week — where I’d give my update about said baby steps.

And I didn’t find it interesting or esthetically pleasing to see all these titles — identical words, series of dates — listed in the sidebar under “Recent Posts.”

So I’ve decided to drop that method; from now on, I don’t need a leash to hold myself accountable. I will continue to take my baby steps and promise to report back to you through informal posts with fun titles.

DAMN FEAR

Last Tuesday, as I was about to press the “publish” button and announce to the world my firm intention to move, I was struck with the Big Shit Scare.

Oh yeah.

Having not had the time to publish my post before leaving for my son’s cottage in beautiful Boucherville (school break = fun with the grandkids), I found myself later that night sitting in my son’s basement, feverish and fatigued, staring at the computer screen, my hand resting on the mouse, my index unable to budge.

What was I thinking?!!! How could I possibly move out of my housing co-op when I don’t even have the financial means to pay for anything other than the flat I’m living in at the moment and whose rent, thank my lucky stars, is calculated based on my yearly income?!!!

Deap breath…

And then I got a flash. I saw the progress I had made since the beginning of the year. I thought of my report on poverty. And I immediately understood that I simply had to take the leap of faith: click!

Now I’m even more determined.
IT’S GOING TO WORK!

I’M ATTRACTING MY IDEAL HOME

REFERENCES: The 12-Notch Plan — Notch #3 – GOALS for March

Notch #3 – GOALS for March

ELIMINATE THE OLD!

2010 equals change.
MAJOR change.

So I’ve decided to get ready to move out of
this place I’ve been living in since 1982.

Yes indeed, even though I have no idea where I want to go or how I’ll find the means to get there, I firmly believe that on or before July 1, 2011, I will move out of this housing co-op and into a beautiful, loft-like / open space home. And since I have no intention of dragging along a bunch of old stuff, I will be eliminating as much of it as I can over the months to come.

Thus, Ladies and Gents, March is all about cleaning out
the two storage facilities on my back balcony.

STORAGE 1

STORAGE 2

I will be posting the “zen look” pictures at the end of the month.

ATTRACT THE NEW!

March is also about using the tools at my disposal
for ATTRACTING my perfect home.

I need to revisit my Law of Attraction books, improve my meditation and visualization techniques, and make sure to focus my thoughts and actions in the right direction.

I’M MOVING INTO MY DREAM HOME

Do YOU have any plans or goals for March?

REFERENCES: The 12-Notch Plan — UPDATE / Week of February 22 to 28 AND Notch #2 Trophy — The Big Purge — Official Paper Purge Launch

a complicated kindness

That’s the title of the book I’m reading
– a complicated kindness.

(No caps in the title = just so you know it’s not a mistake.)

The author, Miriam Toews, is my new she-ro: every single book she’s written to date has won and/or has been nominated for an award.

And she’s Canadian — w00t!

Born in 1964 in the small Mennonite town of Steinbach, Manitoba.

Obviously inspired by her own life experience, Toews tells the story of Nomi Nickel, a 16-year-old trapped in a small Mennonite town (hello?) who lives with her father Ray and spends her days trying to piece together the reasons why her mother, Trudie, and her sister, Natasha, have gone missing.

I’m about one-third into the book, and Toews’ style and wry humour remind me of J.D. Salinger’s; so I’m laughing a lot and can’t get myself to stop reading.

Here’s an excerpt:

We’re Mennonites. As far as I know, we are the most embarrassing sub-sect of people to belong to if you’re a teenager. Five hundred years ago in Europe a man named Menno Simons set off to do his own peculiar religious thing and he and his followers were beaten up and killed or forced to conform all over Holland, Poland and Russia until they, at least some of them, finally landed right here where I sit. Ironically, they named this place East Village, which, I have learned, is the name of the area in New York City that I would most love to inhabit. Others ran away to a giant dust bowl called the Chaco, in Paraguay, the hottest place in the world. My friend Lydia moved here from Paraguay and has told me stories about heat-induced madness. She had an uncle who regularly sat on an overturned feed bucket in the village square and screamed for his brain to be returned to him. At night it was easier to have a conversation with him. We are supposed to be cheerfully yearning for death and in the meantime, until that blessed day, our lives are meant to be facsimiles of death or at least the dying process.

Once I’m done with a complicated kindness, I’ll be reading Swing Low: A Life (Miriam’s memoir of her father’s troubled life), and then summer of my amazing luck (“Delightfully humorous, subversive, and naughtily clever,” says the Prairie Fire) — all of which I’ve borrowed from my local library.

Her other two books were taken, so I reserved them: a boy of good breeding, and her latest novel, the flying troutmans.

After reading through Toews’ entire works, I’ll either be hungry for more or totally nauseated. But one thing’s for sure, it’ll be the end of reading other people’s stuff for a while: I’ll have memoirs of my own to write.

Which brings me to an update concerning my big paper purge: the way things are going — and they’re going honky dory, thank you — my prediction is that by the end of June, I’ll be done with the whole mess. That’s when the real fun will begin.

I’m happy and excited… yet calm and serene.
All good!