New Year: time to decloak

As y'all have noticed, I've disappeard for four months now. It's been an introspective time for me, where I have taken in all the craziness that has been going on around me and sorted things out to decide which way I want my life to go. It's also been extremely busy at work. We are opening up another showroom in Miami and there has been so much to do that it was easy for me to throw myself into work to tune out things that were not pleasant to deal with. I've also gained 20 pounds in the past 2 months, which I guess was my wake up call that I needed to start dealing with things.

It seems that for the past two years I have been purging, purging, purging. The excess in my life, which is something I've blogged about many times before, is upsetting to me. It's not an issue of clutter, there is plenty of space in my house to put away all my things and have it look neat, both outwardly and inwardly (as in closets and such). I don't completely understand why all this stuff upsets me, it just does. A big part of it is that it creates an impossible "to do" list in my head. Too many books and magazines to read, movies to watch, charts to stitch, music to listen to, games to play, etc etc. It's all too much!!!

Which happens to be the title of a book by Peter Walsh I recently picked up at Barnes & Noble, or Borders, not sure which, since I visit both of them every week. Some of you might know him from the TLC show "Clean Sweep". He also was on Oprah back in November when they did a two-part show on "The Secret Lives of Hoarders" and will be on again in February after the release of his new book, "Does My Clutter Make My Butt Look Fat".

Going back to the book, I'm in the process of reading it (if only I had enough time!), so there's not a whole lot I can say good or bad about it, but having watched his shows before (not recently, again, no time), I think I will get a lot out of it. Peter Walsh's communication style gets through to me. It was one of the reasons I liked his show so much. The other was that, because no matter how much stuff I had, I never allowed my house to look like a mess, let alone the disaster homes he worked to clean out and it was, and still is, completely baffling to me that anyone can walk by mountains of clutter day after day and do nothing about it.

That being said, though I have not stitched as much as I used to, I have stitched some, and I will take pictures this weekend and show you all soon.

Thanks for coming by. I hope you've all had a Happy Holiday and wish that 2008 will be a good year for you.