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"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance."

...............................................................Thomas Jefferson


Saturday, January 12, 2008

Defragging your Life



When is the last time you defragged? Not your computer, yourself. We move along at warp speed, taking care of tasks, taking care of family and friends…when’s the last time we remembered to take care of ourselves?

I’m defragging this weekend. Out here in the tall timber, where the internet hookup is dinosaur dial-up, so slow that I’m not even sure these words much less a picture will upload unless I drive 20 miles into town in search of wifi.

And there you have it—the excuse looming—even in defragging the sneaky weasel of “I’m so busy….”

The little bits and bytes and documents and corrupted files and glitches and everything else that goes into making each day every once in a while need to be dragged back into order and clarity and function.

Doing that takes an effort. It takes shutting down all the programs and plans and schedules and saying, wait. Time-out. With a purpose.

Defragging can be as easy and uncomplicated sometimes as simply closing your eyes, tuning out the background noise and just breathing deep. Or it can be as complicated as packing up and heading out to the Amazon for a few weeks. Or climbing Mt. Everest…once upon a time. Now even that’s gotten complicated and fragged with the flotsam of the climbers and the bodies of the ones who didn’t make it.

Saluting Sir Edmund Hillary this snowy tall timber morning. May his heavens be filled with mountains and the vigor to climb them.

The architect author Sarah Susanka in her Not So Big House books gives voice to defragging as a model for architecture and home concepting. Reading her, I learned of making an “away place” within your home.

Whether you call it defragging or going to your away place or journaling or climbing Mount Everest…or just closing your eyes and being in your sanctuary of the mind…you’ll be the better for it. Your life will be the better for making those times of easing back and letting all the flotsam and clutter clear away, restoring a stronger foundation for whatever may lie ahead.

Go ahead, start your defragging now…first, close your eyes….

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