When I cook (yes, it does happen from time to time!), I like to start with a clean kitchen and I typically clean as much as I can as I go. And it irritates me if I come home and want to cook, but there are dirty dishes around...because then I feel like I need to clean everything first before I can start. I just like to have room.

And I think I feel like that with space in general. When I have a cluttered room, I don't feel like I can move forward. Recently, I feel unhappy with my environment at home. It feels stagnant. There's no forward movement. I need to find the little things I can do to change what's around me. I'm focused on cleaning this weekend. I feel like if I clean, other things will open up for me. I will feel comfortable with starting something new. I don't know what that new thing will be, but I will be ready for it.

At first, I wanted to organize my life this weekend - do some evaluating and map out some steps to get to some specific goals. But now I think that maybe I just need to start clearing things out in the house and that will help free up my mind and make things clearer for me. Right now, I feel like there are so many things I want to do and I'm having a hard time prioritizing and clarifying. It's like going through a purifying/isolating process.

I used to work in an immunological lab and one job I had was isolation. I would get a batch of animal blood that had been developed to build up antibodies to a certain antigen. So my job was to take out everything else from the blood and leave the specific antibody in there. I would filter it, concentrate it, test it to see what else needed to be removed and keep going through that process until the product was pure. Even though it was a tedious process, it was satisfying to end up with a concentrated, pure product.

And that's what I want in my life. I want to remove unnecessary, distracting things and end up with a concentrated, pure life. I've always wanted a simple life. So instead of trying to reach and build that ideal life (as if I need to obtain something new), maybe what I need is to purify what I already have. In other words, God has already given me all I need for life so I just need to remove the obstacles.

Michelangelo said that he released David from the marble block he found him in. There is one sculpture that I want to find where it looks like a man emerging from a block. I don't know if it's by Michelangelo (I think it is). But I remember first seeing that somewhere years ago and it's always stuck with me because it depicted such a strong, vibrant man emerging from a simple, ordinary, almost lifeless block.

So instead of thinking of all the changes and remodeling I want to do in the house (and my life), I will focus on clearing out what I don't need and enhancing what is already there. Somehow, that puts my mind more at ease and the task doesn't look as daunting. A good place to start.

More quotes from "The Artist's Way"

For those of us who have become artistically anorectic - yearning to be creative and refusing to feed that hunger in ourselves so that we become more and more focused on our deprivation - a little authentic luxury can go a long way.

Art requires us to empower ourselves with choice. At the most basic level, this means choosing to do self-care.

Because artistic losses are seldom openly acknowledged or mourned, they become artistic scar tissue that blocks artistic growth...The unmourned disappointment becomes the barrier that separates us from future dreams.

"Surround yourself with people who respect and treat you well." Claudia Black

"Man can learn nothing except by going from the known to the unknown." Claude Bernard

Just as a player who ignores a sore muscle may tear it further, an artist who buries his pain over losses will ultimately cripple himself into silence.