On organizing my computer and life...
Swimming in Lots Of Digital Stuff.
This letter is for my fellow research fanatics who amass mountains of links, articles, references, and need to write ideas to process. i.e. you’re swimming in Lots Of Digital Stuff. It’s flaming, it’s toppling over...and you’re feeling overwhelmed. Overloaded. Way too saturated.
My decision to organize my desktop, drive, photos, documents, was a decision for integration and simplification. I started this feat because there was something pulling at my sleeve encouraging me to slow down to catch up with what I know (or, rather, let it finally catch up with me). If you’ve been avoiding your digital mess for a while, may this Gentle Musings be a Gentle Nudge.
We’ve all amassed so much: stories, dreams, fears, proclivities, beliefs, assumptions we don’t even see, material stuff, and digital stuff. Life is full! It’s also possible to approach what has been collected, even if it stands as a looming mountain, little by little in the name of simplification and integration. That article that you’ve been saving for months? It can be prioritized! It can also be released or passed to a friend (for them to deal with on their mountain). That idea that you’ve been wanting to realize? You’ve probably done more preparing for it than you realize (talking to myself here too)! And so, with love, here it is…
11:00 today, second cup of coffee—this time decaf, yes!—I looked at a dug up screenshot saved in my drive. It was marked March 2015. Taking a screenshot was my way of ‘backing up’ my bookmarks (if this shows how sideways some of my organizational logic is, imagine this times 83 GB). In the photo was my email inbox at the time, with almost 5,000 unread messages, and the bookmark tab open to show one fraction of the saved bookmarks. Above my inbox, a collection of open tabs. Behind the window, an equally cluttered desktop.
I had been doubting how worthwhile the mega task of clearing out my computer files and getting it orderly actually was. It’s one of those time-sucking tasks that seems to be more of a drag than a payoff. So. Much. Information. And anyway, I’ve tried to get things straightened out before, but it always returns to chaos.
Seeing that photo stopped me in my tracks.
I hadn’t given my digital space a good dusting and scrubbing since....college? And in college, I was already working off of a cluttered collection of files and notes from high school? Whew! Is it this way with everything if we don’t hold up to the light and give a good, hard look at it? Clothes, books, journals, habits, relationships, ideas, beliefs, paradigms so invisible we can’t see their form...
Sifting through the files, knee-deep in tedium, I was trying to trust that it was worth the time. I was trying to believe, ‘this will pay off, this will offer replenishment and groundedness’. Because so long as I wasn’t looking at it straight-on, it was a background hum in my days.
I want to remember what I know.
Such a massive piece of activism, truly embodying political and ecological consciousness, includes the skill of deeply engaging the concepts. Not once, but as a practice of life.
This calls for organization. And when it comes to praxis, action also looks like being articulate in conversations on the topic: knowing the nested histories, recalling the stats, holding complexities, being grounded in your knowledge and wisdom while also maintaining an open-heart, an eye toward bridging understanding and holding conceptual flexibility to meet each conversation with care. Still, organizing digital files felt like a waste of time.
And then I dug up some therapy notes from college touching on the same themes. It read:
productivity—never feeling like i have enough knowledge... what does this stem from? ...because i want to show my intelligence, i want to be of service for people, i want to best know how to handle a situation
I wrote about feeling trapped in every task: reading a book seemed like a waste of time compared to cleaning the kitchen. Upon cleaning, I noticed that really, the wise thing would be to learn coding. Learning coding was a slough and why wasn’t I practicing asanas? That was the familiar merry-go-round. It was a never-ending loop of each task, really each moment, not being enough… and the human condition of not feeling enough when in the midst of it all.
In perfect timing, when the tedium of organization felt like too much, I would come across something that landed in exactly the right way. What I knew caught up with me.
Who knew that sifting through files and deleting old baggage would be an experience in self-compassion?
You might find the same thing, too. Especially if you journal and have many scattered documents with quick thoughts. Most of us, most of the time, are trying our best. Trying to figure out this human thing, trying to figure out how to avoid suffering or come into relationship with it, trying to meet core needs of connection and safety and purposefulness and happiness and a coherent sense of self.
In that post-therapy note, I asked a number of times: where does this stem from? In seeking to understand, I thought identifying the source of my (perceived) neuroses was the answer. What my 20-year-old self didn’t know, what I can offer back to myself years later, is that while understandable, focusing on the source is a trap. Tacking down a story-line is a total dead-end. And unfortunately, it’s a brilliant way to avoid being with the pain of never feeling enough and never feeling settled in the moment.
Because we’ve all amassed so much, because life is full.
The present need is to simply be with the feeling. Make some room for it. Not trace it back to a point in time, but meet it right here and listen to its wisdom.
It's about mustering up the compassion to say to the suffering, ‘hey, I see you. I’m here, don’t worry. This has been going on for a while now, huh? I’m here now’.
The decision to organize my digital junk drawers offered the opportunity to meet past pain, past doubts, past patterns of recurring suffering in the present moment. It offered the opportunity to reach back, hold that suffering, and integrate in ways that I didn't know how to at the time.
I swear, we have all come further than we give ourselves credit for. In whatever way that it needs to happen, I hope that we can each find the patience and even the courage to slow down to catch up with what we know, feel the balm that's there, and meet ourselves deeper in the process.
With love,
Maggy
PS: Let me know what landed for you! Do you have digital junk drawers, too??
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