cleaning the Junk Drawer

I was recently looking for a tape measure, so I went to the junk drawer in our kitchen. If you are too fancy to know what a junk drawer is, it’s a catch-all place for all the little stuff you might need someday that has no home of its own.

Of course, there was no tape measure in the drawer. I did find several almost empty rolls of regular tape, electrical tape, and some packing tape. I won’t bore you with the entire inventory, but I did find six pens that no longer work, enough takeout chopsticks for a large crowd, a dead flashlight, several unidentified objects, a leaking soy sauce packet...you get the picture. I threw out some of the junk, but it’s still a mess.

If I were to dump out that drawer completely, I imagine I’d only put a small percentage of those items back in. And I’d definitely include one of the half dozen tape measures hidden somewhere in this house, along with a working flashlight. Every time I open that junk drawer I think, I really need to clean this out. But I never do. I’ll throw away some dried-up pens or excess chopsticks, but it needs more than that.

If you’ve been reading Second Rodeo a while, you know I love a good metaphor. This minimalist approach feels like how a lot of us approach our life’s priorities and demands. Every once in a while, we get stressed enough to eliminate something, but often replace it with something else in a matter of days. Like the junk drawer, a better approach would be to start from scratch.

A Second Rodeo is just that–an opportunity to eliminate the accumulated junk and detritus of life, while intentionally and selectively putting back those things that have value to us.

The thing that usually initiates a Second Rodeo is a desire to withdraw from our primary career, or what many people call “retirement.” The thought of having all that free time is either exhilarating or frightening, depending on your perspective.

You’ve heard the idiom “nature abhors a vacuum.” Like the junk drawer, when we remove something, even a big thing like work, we will inevitably fill it with something else. When you talk to someone who’s been retired a year or so, they’ll often say something like, “I’m so busy now I don’t know how I ever had time to go to work.” Busyness of course, is one way we avoid having the bandwidth to be about more consequential things.

I’m advocating a more intentional approach to creating your next chapter. The following exercise is designed to stimulate your thinking around creating your next ideal lifestyle. It’s a thought exercise, no one’s life is ideal. But compared to the life you’re living right now, how might you reprioritize your life when you have the opportunity?

Take some time to answer the following inventory to the best of your ability. This is an attempt to identify our truest priorities. Go with your first impressions. Be specific. This is a classic example of perfect being the enemy of good. As you develop the following lists, you can then determine what things to eliminate or incorporate into a Second Rodeo.

Emotional Well-being

• What situations have created the deepest, most lasting happiness for me?

• What situations have tended to create the most stress in my life?

Physical Health

• What positive and negative choices have I made regarding my physical health in the past several years?

• What do I need to prioritize in the next season to optimize my physical well-being?

• How am I prioritizing sleep these days?

Perspective on Work

• Over the past five years, how have my feelings about work changed? What caused those changes?

• Has my job given me satisfaction and a sense of making a difference? Why or why not?

• Forget ‘work-life’ balance. Has my job worked in harmony with other important aspects of your life?

Relational Audit

• Who are the people who are building into my life?

• What are the attributes of my community (“my kind of people”)?

• What types of relationships are missing from my life?

Spiritual Center

While some readers may choose to answer this category in the context of a religious faith, for others spiritual has a non-religious definition, i.e. “that which gives my life meaning.”

• Where have I found meaning and significance thus far?

• What are the most important spiritual moments of the past few years?

• What have been the perennial spiritual struggles of my life?

These are big questions, and I recognize not everyone has the natural inclination to dig this deep into issues of meaning and purpose. But if you tend to look at your life like the cluttered junk drawer, cleaning out just what is no longer necessary or useful, a complete inventory and restock will give you different, more lasting results.

A Second Rodeo can be that once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to create a new lifestyle based on your truest understanding of self. While it may change over time, at least your initial restart will be entirely of your own creation.

As always, we’ve been through this many times and are ready to support. Go to our contact page to schedule a free call!

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