Prologue

From a usability standpoint, this blog is horrible. White on black is hard to read and worse to print. So don't print anything.

I picked white on black for aesthetic reasons. It seemed to fit the idea best of all the blog templates Blogger provided. I may have to design one of my own.

The aforementioned idea came from my pastor, who's getting rid of things. Seven per week. Not sure I'm going to be getting rid of things, per se, and I'm sure it won't be exactly seven per week.

But when there is so much clutter in my house and the reason that I'm hanging on to certain things is less sentimental and more a lack of time to spend on getting rid of them; when I check my e-mail on my cell phone at red lights; when my workday productivity suffers because I stayed up the night before wasting time on the computer or on other things that could wait and I couldn't even remember what it was that kept me up past midnight; when I'm too tired to spend time with or emotional energy on my family; when I feel a need to fill up every quiet space in my day with noise, it's time to prioritize my physical and spiritual time and life. And that means some things must go. Some of those things may even be material.

There are several of us who have been inspired by this project of my pastor's. Most of them plan on following her lead and getting rid of seven things in a week by donating, giving away, throwing away, etc. I hope to be doing some of that. I'm not at a point right now where I can commit to a number, or even know what sorts of things I'll be getting rid of. I suspect some of those things will be time commitments -- even time commitments to good things -- that are stealing my resources away from the most important things in my life. I hope to be able to get to the point where others are -- where I can concentrate mostly on getting rid of material stuff. Heaven knows I've got more than I need of that. Right now, I have some wading to do.