Okay. It should be obvious that nomads don’t need so much stuff. But I find that the “lose the clutter and set yourself free ”  or “organize the clutter (and still set yourself free)” kind of advice you can get is extremely uneven. And I come from a long line of packrats (and I’ve fathered another packrat but that’s another story) so I know something about trying to get rid of the clutter. 

Take the case of these two examples of set-yourself-free-and-lose-the-clutter guides: 

1. When Organizing isn’t Enough: SHED your stuff, change your life by Julie Morgentstern  is one of those execrable self-help books that takes 250 pages to say what could be said in one well-written 20 page pamphlet.

But, there is a kernel of usefulness here:

There’s three parts to the process: 1. SHED 2. Find your theme 3. Pick your point of Entry.

SHED means: Separate the treasures, Heave the trash, Embrace your identity Drive yourself forward. The first two parts are obvious, the third part is understandable (a bit more about that below). The fourth part is a bit rah-rah contrived but if that’s what works for some people, fine. 

What is interesting is that it the shedding isn’t necessarily of physical things. It can just as easily be things you do or think you have to do. And the “embrace your identity” part is to use this process to figure out what you are (or, more accurately, what you want to do ) so you know what it is you should shed (I think).

The Find your theme part is about finding the theme of the shedding so you have a focus for why you’re doing what you do. I’m not sure how this differs from the “embrace your identity” part but there you are. I’ll read a bit more and see if I can figure that out. The third phase (Pick your point of Entry) seems to be a kind of “name the moment” idea but I will read a bit more of that just to see if it goes anywhere useful. 

That said, there’s no way I can read this whole thing. Like I said, it’s 250 pages to say 20 pages worth. 

2. The second example of lose-the-clutter advice is the complete opposite of the first: smart, quick, brief, and inspiring. So, I won’t bother going on about it, just go read The Last Viridian Note  by Bruce Sterling. 

An awful lot of artists in the Vancouver Eastside Culture Crawl were producing an awful lot of art.

Beyond the obvious “culture high” one gets from wandering around and among so much creativity, I’m starting to wonder about a few things:

1.  Do most North American cities of 2.5million people have this size of art community? Or is this an example of Vancouver’s prodigious wealth in the “creative class”.  We tend to like to think we’re special, but maybe we’re kidding ourselves. I don’t know.  
    
2.  What’s the attraction of that artistic, studio-scene? Both K & I remarked about how attractive the artistic life seemed from this superficial level. That said, after a while, I started to wonder how many of these artists were really making a living from their art, how many have to have second jobs or alternate incomes to support themselves, and how many are essentially dilletantes who are using some other source of income to support their artistic lifestyles but don’t really have a chance of ever supporting themselves with this stuff. Furhter, there’s two kinds of people in this latter category: those who’s art isn’t commercial and who don’t feel inclined to change it to make it so (and there’s nothing wrong with that); and those who’s art is, let’s face it, not very good!
    
3. A studio (which seems necessarily to have to be in a fixed location) doesn’t seem very nomadic. Perhaps it’s not,  but there do seem to be people there who can and do create their art in various settings and use their studio for only particular parts of their process. 
    
4. There’s a whole ‘nuther thing about the artistic community being urban pioneers and making a place for a next wave of urban dwellers (who then make a place attractive to a third wave, and so on). The huge trap with this cycle (and one Vancouver is caught tight in) is that the second (and third) waves of urbanists cause real estate prices to go up and price the artists complete out of the district. In Vancouver this is hugely exacerbated by our crazy-high land prices which are just now beginning to subside (but not nearly enough for the average (starving) artist). 

One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Wait. A couple of them just went past. But there’s more appearing up ahead. Try that again: One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten! And that’s just the ones coming towards me. “What am I doing,” you ask? I’m counting cars. Actually, I’m just counting their headlights. I’m riding along Ontario St. at 29th Ave. in Vancouver at 5:30 on a rainy Tuesday night. And I’m counting the unbelievable number so SOV commuters I can see between here and 38th avenue where the road goes over a hill. Pretty severe for a side-street, you have to admit. But wait, it gets worse. This isn’t an ordinary sidestreet. This is a “Bikeway”. This is one of only about two dozen designated bike routes in Vancouver. What’s worse than that? Ontario is one of only a few that run right across the city and into downtown. Remember, we have well over 200 streets in Vancouver. So, when I have to navigate among dozens of cars on a bikeway each trip home from work, there’s something wrong with this.

If I was a motorist  Read more »

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