Ear Hustling is the Best Gateway to a Writing Prompt
Is writer’s block a figment of our imagination or lack thereof?
I’ve been on a mission ever since I overheard a conversation at Peet’s Coffee & Tea a few months ago. By the way, if you’ve never tried cocaine, Peet’s is a cheaper, legal alternative.
California boasts seventy percent of its coffee shops. We get it in, but addiction is costly at almost six bucks a pop for a small specialty espresso drink — still, cheaper than nose candy.
Two older women stood behind me in line, gabbing like teenagers who hadn’t seen each other since high school. My ears perked up when the lean silver-haired fox wearing the red plaid shirt said, “You don’t want to spend the rest of your life looking for shit.”
When I can’t find what I’m looking for, she appears in my head, shaking her crooked index finger back and forth.
I thought she was talking to me. How could she know I spend too much time looking for shit? I can’t tell you how many times I’ve repeated her mantra to the hubby. Before life got busy with love, marriage, work, and kids, I was the queen of everything in its place.
The three men in my life broke me of that habit. I no longer care that everything’s in its place as long as it’s out of my sight. As the years evaporated like steamed milk in my pricey espresso — stealing our youth, we all accumulated too much.
Since the hubby’s retired and I’m still working, I admit I’ve lost some motivation to keep the home squeaky clean, shiny, and dust-bunny-less. Two days after I wave my magic cleaning wand, it loses its shine as if I had done nothing at all. What gives?
The weekend after overhearing the wise old silver fox, I began shedding the last ten years of clothing I’ll never wear again — career dresses, skirts, suits, and any other out-of-style piece of clothing. Shoes, too. No longer sporting six-inch heels to work — so yesterday.
Not that I waited 10 years to clean out my closet and drawers — I never thought about getting rid of my professional attire at the back of the closet taking up much-needed space even though several years have passed since I wore anything close to a suit.
Too many choices are the bane of our existence, and as a lifelong fashionista, it’s definitely been mine. Why did I need suits in every color imaginable? Including turquoise and periwinkle.
It’s known a cluttered environment leads to a cluttered mind. Hence, my new mission — to scale my life down to the bare essentials so I can free up space both in my closet and head. I’m going through my entire house and garage like Grant went through Richmond.
There’s another upside far beyond the act of clearing space, the KonMari method, minimalism, and Greg McKeown’s essentialism.
When you declutter, not only do you get rid of stuff you don’t need, you find buried treasures you forgot you had — old pictures, mementos, letters, an old flame’s high school letterman’s jacket. Shhh. Why was I holding on to this again?
I’ve bagged loads of old clothes, shoes, purses, knickknacks, books, and plain old crap — sold some items, took the rest to Goodwill and the Salvation Army in hopes someone else could use it.
A tattered satin navy blue coin purse that belonged to my grandmother peeped through a piece of lingerie in my top drawer. If you saw it, you might question my sanity, think, why would anyone keep this old thing?
I keep it because I believe articles worn close to the body hold vibrations of the person they once belonged to — the reason I don’t shop at secondhand stores anymore. There’s something a little creepy to me now about wearing used clothing and walking in someone else’s shoes.
No offense to anyone who loves second-hand stores. Some people don’t shop retail at all — I get it. I’m an overthinker — what if the person’s shoes I bought and walking in died a tragic death? I need all the good vibes I can get. But I digress.
Not only does my beloved grandmother’s coin purse comfort me to know she held it close to her person, but it also reminds me of her core beliefs and teachings about money that will live on through me forever. It symbolizes her values passed onto the next generation. I have passed them on to my children.
Grandmother's beliefs about money
- We shouldn’t worship money like a deity. She understood the spiritual value of money lies in the simple act of exchange — giving and receiving, following laws of reciprocity. She didn’t covet the almighty dollar — she respected it, always had it whenever anyone in the family needed it and regularly gave to charity and church. Bless her heart, she was astute at picking the right numbers when she played and hit every week, too. She was magical.
- Never keep money in your wallet or loose in a purse. As a kid, each time I left the City of Brotherly Love to fly back to my home in the City of Lost Angels, my grandmother always wrapped dollar bills in a handkerchief and pinned it to the inside of my shirt or waistband of my pants. It was the only way she traveled, whether across country or across town. She never carried money in her purse.
- She kept her money in a safe place, not the bank — may have even slept with it tucked inside the band of her pajama bottoms. I guess living through the great depression taught her a few lessons. People of the era lost their life savings in banks. It wouldn’t surprise me if it happened again in the not-so-distant future.
- The importance of an emergency fund — “It’s a poor rat who only has one hole,” my grandmother used to say. There are a few ways to interpret this as women have been told for decades they should always keep a private stash in case things get slippery in their marriage and they need to make a mad dash. Or it could mean simply — hide your cash in different places, spread the wealth or don’t put all your eggs in one basket. You get the drift.
- Money is to be used for the good of all — the necessities in life that make a family whole. She wasn’t what I’d call frugal, but she spent money on needs, not wants. When those wants were reasonable, she didn’t mind spending it on a good cause. After my college graduation, she bought me my first suit to go for an interview. She cared less about the expense, more about how the suit would make me feel — happy to give me a confidence booster.
See? Ear hustling. A simple phrase from a stranger can be an impetus to creating something out of nothing. Writing is mind travel to places we weren’t thinking of going until we do. Ideas are always swarming around us if we pay attention.
Pick one out of the air when you think you’ve lost your mojo. Let your imagination fly.
At some point in life, the world’s beauty becomes enough ~ Toni Morrison