Laissez-Faire Cleaner Right Here

I used to be a clothes-piling, trash-tossing, Laissez-Faire Cleaner who subconsciously preferred having clutter around...to the extent all I cared about was clearing a pathway from the door to my bed, in my bedroom. That was when I was a kid, of course. Not now...

Okay, so there's always going to be a little kid in me somewhere, but it just happens that I've matured. Through years of messiness and unorganized havoc that I thought was organized, writing has gotten me into the habit of paying attention to my surrounding environments--whether they be my room, my home or my car.

A cleaner version of any and all those things do, indeed, make a difference in other aspects of our lives. I know that from experience, since I now consider myself a *Reformed* Laissez-Faire Cleaner;)

The more clutter you have around you, the more your eyes have to work at taking in the sight. The more you have to move your body or arm or leg (or whatever else) around it. The more your overall energy-level is affected (which can be related to our creative flows and the inability to express them, sometimes).

By avoiding tidiness all we do is transfer work to ourselves internally--whether it be in the form of ailments like eye-sores, headaches, or feeling like your brain is the egg in that anti-drug add from the eighties, or less obvious things, like loss of focus, or distracting thoughts such as, "Oh, so that's where that is. I better put it back."

With the development of my unquenchable desire to work at my best (cuz that's what happens when you become an adult, right?), and by becoming friends with neat-freaks, I've learned the value of keeping my "stuff" at bay.

When I find my writing has become stagnant or repetitive, when I find my mind scrambles a little more than normal, when I start using the mess as an excuse to get up from the computer... That's when I realize my surroundings are affecting my work.

Our profession is 97% mental (don't ask me where that number came from, just know I had the adage about pro athletes in mind!). Tidiness prevents us mental-creators from being distracted by things we've placed in our own paths. Sometimes the easiest solution is clearing the way for ourselves.

What about you? Do you notice a difference in your writing when you have, let's say, a tidy desk rather than one filled with clutter...or draped with clothes...or has accumulated waaayyy too many cups of coffee/water/soda/leftover Pina Coladas/Kool-Aid? Were you ever a Laissez-Faire Cleaner like me? Let me know!