{"id":4990,"date":"2017-05-02T08:03:19","date_gmt":"2017-05-02T12:03:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.susanvogt.net\/blog\/?p=4990"},"modified":"2019-02-20T10:50:36","modified_gmt":"2019-02-20T15:50:36","slug":"365145-updating-my-life-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.susanvogt.net\/blog\/365145-updating-my-life-2\/","title":{"rendered":"365+#145:\u00a0Updating My Life #2-Paper"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>I\u2019m in a time warp. Easter was over 2 weeks ago but I\u2019m still finishing up my Lenten resolve to prune my file cabinets. By Easter I had pruned 2 drawers of my first cabinet. (See here<\/strong><\/a> ) Once started, I was motivated to keep going. I have now finished the final 2 drawers of file cabinet #1 and continue to have insights about life and myself.<\/p>\n

\u2022\u00a0TIME WAS MY ENEMY, BUT RAIN WAS MY FRIEND
\n<\/strong>I had planned to spend most of Saturday at the local Climate March but it was cancelled because of heavy rains. This meant that I had a free day plus it was too wet to work in the garden.<\/p>\n

\u2022 DECIDING WHAT PAPER TO KEEP & WHAT TO PITCH<\/strong><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Will I ever need this paper again?<\/strong> My default position was \u2013 Maybe. Therefore, I would keep the paper. BUT, I was in full pruning mode and committed to being realistic and making room for only important stuff and letting go of \u201cjust-in-case” papers. Practically speaking this meant wistfully remembering past temporary jobs and saving only documentation for tax, resume, or likely reference purposes.<\/li>\n
  2. Is it obsolete or redundant?<\/strong> This is a sub-category of #1 since some documentation (like manuals or talk outlines) were important at the time but if it was over 5-10 years old, even if I was doing similar work, the information would need updating. Besides most recent work I\u2019ve done is on my computer or available online.
    \nSimilarly, I asked myself, \u201cHow many prayer services do I really need to save?\u201d I had a humongous file of past prayers that were beautiful but I had multiple copies and others I had on my computer. Besides there were just too many to even find one that was appropriate for a given situation. It took a while, but I categorized the remaining ones. What good is an inspiring prayer if it\u2019s buried with so many that I couldn\u2019t find it?<\/li>\n
  3. Technology trumps paper<\/strong>. As an author of 5 books and too many articles to count I found files of background material. Hey, this is not scientific research. The books are written. I don\u2019t need to save the back-up surveys and early drafts. This prompted a reflection on the change that computers have brought. I had 2\u201d of background material for an early book but only \u00bc\u201d for my latest book. Computers save paper.<\/li>\n
  4. Who cares?<\/strong> I found a copy of a letter I had sent Oprah Winfrey, offering to be a guest on her TV show to talk about one of my first books. Later publishers clued me in that it was na\u00efve to presume that an unknown author would have a chance at a big name show. Letting go of pride is sometimes harder than paper.<\/li>\n
  5. Become less picky<\/strong>. As I neared the end of a 4 hour stretch of categorizing and pruning, I became much freer to discard papers. Perhaps I hit a learning curve about what was worth saving, or perhaps it was just fatigue. After a while, stuff didn\u2019t seem so important anymore.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    \"\"<\/a>\u2022 OUTDATED TECHNOLOGY
    \n<\/strong>Does anyone remember \u201ctransparencies\u201d? They were helpful visuals for the days before PowerPoint. I realized that even if the information was still valid, I doubt that any institution still had the equipment to project these plastic sheets. It wasn\u2019t paper, but it was filed like paper.<\/p>\n

    The result of my weekend\u2019s work was a 15\u201d stack of paper to discard. This, combined with my Holy Week binge brings my total to 36\u201d of paper to recycle.<\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/a>BONUS RECYCLING TIP
    \n<\/strong>On my way to recycling my paper, I found a box full of packing peanuts. Of course     Styrofoam packing peanuts<\/a><\/strong> are rarely accepted \u00a0in curbside recycling but Click Here<\/a><\/strong> \u00a0to find out how to tell the difference between Styrofoam and biodegradable packing peanuts. Short answer: Just add water. If it dissolves, it\u2019s biodegradable and can be composted.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    I\u2019m in a time warp. Easter was over 2 weeks ago but I\u2019m still finishing up my Lenten resolve to prune my file cabinets. By Easter I had pruned 2 drawers of my first cabinet. (See here ) Once started, I was motivated to keep going. I have now finished the final 2 drawers of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,46],"tags":[27,6,43],"class_list":["post-4990","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-days-365","category-paper-less-lent-2","tag-memorabilia","tag-recycling","tag-tmi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.susanvogt.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4990","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.susanvogt.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.susanvogt.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.susanvogt.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.susanvogt.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4990"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.susanvogt.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4990\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5036,"href":"https:\/\/www.susanvogt.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4990\/revisions\/5036"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.susanvogt.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.susanvogt.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.susanvogt.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}