Have you ever had to clean house?
I mean really clean house, not the sort of cleaning one does because company is coming and you want to make them think you're actually more organized than you really are.
I mean the kind where you get on your knees, dump out all the drawers, get out the giant trash bags and the Goodwill boxes and go through everything.
Even if you're the super neat type, I bet you've had to do this sort of deep dive in your garage...or even more traumatic... a kid's room. We are talking an all day job here, that typically takes over a week to finish... if you're lucky.
Being a writer who happens to be "in the zone" will cause things to get out of hand real quick. Being the family manager (a job that I find is antithetical to being a writer) makes it worse. Because the moment the kids realize you're in a creative maelstrom, they realize they're not going to get yelled at and they stop doing all of their chores. They know as long as I have a coffee cup clean in the morning, I am much too busy writing to confront them about it.
Then, after finishing whatever project I'm gunning to complete, I make the mistake of looking around.
Where did my house go? And how long has it been missing?
KIDS!
By that point it's too late, of course. Nothing else will do but a top to bottom "spring cleaning" style episode that makes the rest of my family panic and hide their favorite junky items so that Mom doesn't decide to throw them in the recycling pile.
Some of you might think... wouldn't it be easier to just do a little every day?
Sure, you can try that, but when you are on a creative bent where you have so many ideas in your head that they're leaking out of your ears, you need to get them down as quickly as possible. There are only so many hours in the day. You are producing so damn fast at that point that other things must give, but with a little less sleep and a little more coffee, I can go for a very long time before I finally look up.
Look, I am creating some brilliant stuff here... brilliant! Sure, most people don't get it.
They're not even willing to look at my first book, let alone my last, because my work has been completely ostracized by its label... a label so repulsive that nobody will even give it a second thought. It hurts to know that... to know that it'll never be seen by most. But it's my life's work, and even if people want to hide my work under labels to keep themselves "protected" from it, it's still worth it to me. It matters to me. And it matters to the few loyal fans I've had that have stayed with me through these past years, despite my less than stellar editing skills.
Now, I'm sure by now you're thinking... okay, great personal rant and all, but what does this have to do with VeVe?
Everything.
Because after years of being in the creative zone - producing, drinking coffee, and losing sleep - they happened to look up at their house.
Roll up those sleeves! It's going to get messy. There's nothing messier than cleaning house.
In fact, it's when things look it's messiest, to be perfectly honest... you start going through your kid's drawers and pretty soon you have piles and piles on the floor that you spend a lot of time overwhelmed and wondering what in the heck did I get myself into?
Because when everything is emptied and you reach what is honestly the halfway point, it looks like total mayhem and chaos. My parents used to say it looked like a tornado hit the house. Well, that would decrease the workload, wouldn't it? If we just wiped the slate clean and started over.
But life doesn't really work that way. As addicted as we may be to resetting games and trashing failed projects... in real life, we don't have that luxury. Getting from point A to point B is set in time now, it happened. It's not going to unhappen. But right now the distance from B to C is blocked by all of this junk in the way, and we're not going to get there unless all these junk piles get sorted.
It is not a bad thing. Just think of all the hidden treasures we're going to find in those piles... things that were lost... things we totally forgot about that suddenly can be seen in a new light. They can be picked up and polished, while those broken toys that realistically aren't worth the time and energy to fix can be replaced by something that works.
It's just as well.
We grew out of those toys anyway.
In fact, we grew out of them a long time ago.
I always tell my kids when they're having to get rid of things they love in one of those cleanings to thank their toys for being with them... it makes it easier for them to let it go. Thanks, special toy, for being there where I needed you, and getting me to the point where I am ready for the next level. Then it goes in the box and it's time to evaluate the next thing we pick up... and the next... and the next... until finally those giant piles don't look so daunting any more.
Finally, we can see the floor. The shelves. Polish the windows... and let in the light. We have space to work in, to play in, to build new projects, to get back in the zone again!
But none of that can happen until we've caught up on the housework first.
Now, we didn't necessarily realize it at the time, but this year has been filled with those junk piles... those dumped out drawers, those garage parts piled in the driveway.
Now we've got a corner of a dusty window scraped away, just enough to get a glimmer of light in to work by. Sure, there's junk scattered in the middle of the floor. But now we can see patches of it.
So take heart. It's a good sign.
We all need to roll up our sleeves and clean house sometimes, after all.