Spring weather combined with my new obsession of reading minimalist blogs has inspired me to declutter my apartment.  Heeding the wisdom of Leo Babuta of Zen Habits I am tackling one area of me casa at a time versus my normal behavior of tearing the entire house apart, followed by a freak out and then a month long attempt of getting my house back in order.  This week, one bookshelf, a day at a time…

As I browse through the first shelf I wonder why it is so difficult to get rid of books.  I can toss out clothes as easy as I toss out the trash but there is something about books that just keeps me holding on.  I decided to attack the center shelf first and it held a surprising amount of books I had never finished.

I found it hilarious that each and every one of these books still had a bookmark in it – a bookmark from Between the Covers in Telluride, a piece of stationary from the Double Tree, another bookmark from my favorite used bookstore in the world, Magers & Quinn in Minneapolis, and a plane ticket stub – San Jose, Costa Rica to Houston.

Instead of shipping these books out the door they will now find a place in the queue on the ridiculous high stack beside my bed.

A History of Women Volume 1 – Front Ancient Goddesses to Christian Saints

I bought A History of Women in the West during my Red Tent, DaVinci Code, Pope Joan phase.  It is the first book in five-volume series detailing the history of women from the ancients through the twentieth century – I had aspired to read all five.  A bookmark holds my place on page 15.  Obviously I found fiction more intriguing than the real history of women.

Guns, Germs, and Steels

I guess I am slightly bitter about my non-liberal arts education.  At the time I thought majoring in Molecular Biology was super cool (which it was sort of), but I sadly did not get to take any real electives in college.  I only had time in my schedule for the required English class and I missed out in all sorts of classes that I would find fascinating now like Anthropology, World Religions, and Middle Eastern History.  When I worked at the University I entertained the idea of going back to school and taking all the courses I missed out on (since I got half off tuition) but a friend of mine told me to read Guns, Germs, and Steel instead, which I did and got to page 95 – not bad.

A People’s History of the United States

I had wanted to read A People’s History forever since opening it up and reading the first chapter in someone’s bathroom at a party quite a few years back.  I finally picked the book up in an airport last year and got so thoroughly bummed out by chapter 4 I haven’t picked it back up.  The book tells the stories of American history from different points of view – like the view from the Native Americans, the working poor, or America’s women.  Hearing the story of Columbus from the point of view of the Arawak Indians is enough to make you want to go back to grade school and vomit all over the history texts.

A History of God

Karen Armstrong’s A History of God had totally enthralled me for the first 51 pages and then I am not really sure what happened.  I set the book down probably five years ago or so I think -  maybe distracted by all the others on my stack during my Buddhist book phase and haven’t picked it up until this moment.

Hmmm I am now curious what all these books hold.

It is no coincidence that the ultimate event in self-expression, Burning Man, occurs every August in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada. Whether it is ancient rock art, massive earth work pieces (Michael Heizer’s work) or mind-tripping burning playa works – Nevada and the rest of the West are breeding ground for artistic expression.

In The Void, the Grid & the Sign, William L Fox takes the reader on a remarkable journey through the dramatic void of the Great Basin making sense of the landscape through art, architecture, and history.  Fox advocates the need for such voids, “big empty spaces into which we can travel in order to see ourselves.”  The desert is important because it is absent of everything we are accustomed to – grass, trees, signs, buildings, city lights, landmarks… The desert severely disturbs our perceptions, makes us uncomfortable, and challenges our habits and comforts of mind.  And when we return home, we view things differently.

Chillin' Somewhere on the Utah-Nevada Border

“In a sense, by virtue or its unadorned surface and the subsequent scope of our vision, the desert acts as an indicator region for the rest of the planet… It’s precisely the vision we need in order to calculate truly our effects on the planet before we spoil it to the point of our own extinction, if we haven’t yet done so,” Fox says so eloquently in the book.

After spending weeks in the Mojave Desert and Death Valley a few years ago, I drove through Las Vegas on my way to the Grand Canyon.  I stopped at Whole Foods to stock up on groceries and wandered aimlessly through that store looking to dazed and confused – a total crazy case – that 3 employees asked me if I was ok.  I was so utterly overwhelmed by the aisles and aisles of packaged goods and excess and all that unnatural fluorescent lighting that I honestly couldn’t function.

The Sun Tunnels

I returned to my car empty handed realizing I could make do with what I had.  It was totally like that scene in the movie Into the Wild, where Alexander Supertramp ends up in LA after spending all that time drifting on the Colorado – feeling so totally overstimulated and disconnected from body and space and so small and so alone on this Earth.

And for this experience, one more reason I love the West.

Art may just be the way to forge a human relationship with the desert – a chance to have our perceptions altered and hopefully leading us to reexamine the way we view the rest of our world.

Other ‘Why I Love the West’ posts:

Why I Love the West: Amazing Natural Hot Springs

After perusing shelf after shelf of books on writing at the public library, I left for home with stacks of books about freelancing.  Kelly James-Enger’s Six-Figure Freelancing: The Writer’s Guide to Making More Money was most helpful.  This book is going to be an excellent resource for me as I begin my freelance writing business with business being the keyword. James-Enger strongly suggests that those wishing to have a freelance writing career take on a business mind-set.  You are not a writer but a successful self-employed businessperson whose business just so happens to be writing.

Although some of the information in the book was slightly banal (such as a discussion about different types of internet connections), the sections on laying the groundwork for your freelance career and thinking about your writing as a business actually changed the way I thought about launching my freelance career.  I kept thinking about what I was going to do to make money once my savings ran out totally assuming that I was going to fail instead of planning ways in which I could succeed.  Advice I took to heart:

• Write part-time to gain clips and connections before taking the leap into a full-time freelance writing career.
• Focus on what you can do.  Stay confident, positive, and expect setbacks.’
• Delve completely into full-time freelancing.  It is too hard to be successfully while splitting your time between other jobs.
• Be organized from the beginning.  Set-up ways to track query letters, project steps, and finances.
• Adopt a business mind-set and firm goals.

Six Figure Freelancing is definitely worth reading if you are considering a career as a freelancer.  The book gives great advice on how to become a full-time freelancer by thinking about writing as a business, and offering tips on writing query letters, organizing your time, setting up a home office, and managing taxes.   Whether you are just beginning to think about freelancing as a career, are just about to take the leap, or are a struggling writer, this book offers helpful information for persons at any stage of their writing career.