There are few things I enjoy more than some good spring cleaning. A place for everything and everything in its place. You know that kind of cleaning when you remove everything from your closet and donate all the jeans you've kept since high school that you had hoped to fit into someday but now are just out of style? The type of cleaning that means you work up a sweat?
This type of cleaning makes my heart happy. But with every major reorganization project, there will come a moment when you look around and realize you have a much bigger mess on your hands than when you started. You will be surrounded by piles of clothes and countless different stacks for different reasons. No matter how much I love the organized result, it is inevitable that I will see the mess I have created and I will want to give up. I will consider shoving everything back into its former place and pretend this mess never
happened. It’s also possible that I will be so overwhelmed with the mid-cleaning-clutter that I will just walk away. Leave the piles to be dealt with another day.
Life is much like a closet reorganization project these days. I am smack dab in the middle of the spring cleaning and folks, I am tired. I feel as if my days are full of Harvey Weinstein verdicts, emails from my attorney and news that the legislation I was working to pass in Indiana has failed. I am mid-cleaning and I am surrounded by the clutter with still so much further to go. In these moments, it is difficult to carry on when all I want is a break, to turn off the news and simply shove all this mess back into the closet and pretend it never happened. These are the times that I think about putting down my metaphorical #metoo picket sign and fall back into the crowd.
But this is where the persistence comes in. After the crowds have moved on, this is when the tough work happens. I look around and I’m surrounded by the clutter but I cannot give up. We, as a society, are decluttering at the moment. We are bringing predatory actions to light, cleaning out the top shelves of the closet and some days it is hard to read another story of allegations. But I know it’s the process. We need to create the mess to end up with the finished product.
This is the hard part, where persistence prevails. Do I have the strength to continue on this uphill battle? Can I keep fighting these legal battles and marketing my books on consent and pushing for legislation changes when none of the efforts seems to be making progress? This is when I need to stand up and realize that the mess around me is actually progress toward positive change. Even though there is much more to go, I’m making the change. I will find my place.