Making and Moving Piles - A Tower of Hanoi View of Decluttering

On not being okay, the Tower of Hanoi, a petrified Cheez-it, and a mystery tool

Sometimes we make piles. Sometimes we move piles. Sometimes we ponder piles.

Happy Sunday!

What piles are you making, sorting, sidestepping, purging, or moving? How much weight do these piles have? Are they holding you back? Or do you enjoy the game, the shuffling of coconuts, faster and faster. Which one hides the prize?

I wonder about piles we can’t see, piles that are internal, piles that we may not recognize as piles until we realize we can’t see around them.

I thought this week I might do an illustrated piece. I keep trying to find my way into that space, pull panels and sketchnotes back to the surface, shape the narrative as an illustrated essay. I am drawn to the promise of open space and fresh air, the comfortable scroll, but the words keep getting in the way.

A picture may be worth a thousand words, but I tend to have a ratio of a thousand words for every one picture.

This week, thinking the words may be thinning, I thought I might tell a story with an illustrated essay. But I didn’t have a story locked down. I didn’t have a clear sense of the path, of the visual footholds. It quickly started to look like a flowchart with arrows and off-ramps and placeholders for spots where I should go back and insert drawings.

Basically, instead of an illustrated essay, I had a bunch of words.

Partly, it wasn’t my favorite week.

It was Wednesday when I first wrote that, and I had to stop and think about that. Had there been seven days between Sunday and Tuesday? The week wasn’t even halfway over. There was still good that could come of the week. There was still gratitude to tap. There was still the chance for serendipity. Things could turn around.

We have to make those things happen. I write them as if they will either happen or not of their own accord, unfolding according to some unseen plan. We all hope the unexpected prize arrives at the door. But the reality is that no one is coming to rescue us. We have to individually take steps, make plans, and shift the narrative.

We have to find and make our own light.

On Monday, I knew a few things:

• It wasn’t my favorite week

• I’m am maybe not okay

I didn’t end up with an illustrated essay this week. But I did a few drawings to go along with a few of the notes. You’ll find those scattered below. The ratio is still around a 1000 (words):1 (image).

Maybe it’s a start.

On Friday, we lit a candle. It wasn’t a ceremonious thing. My son and I stood side by side peering over the edge of a candle as it lit. And we laughed. (The reason for this is revealed later in this post.)

I hope you laughed this week. I hope you made discoveries, contemplated piles, and thought about one single step you might take to shift your narrative. I hope you drew something. I hope you gave yourself a bit of grace and understanding. I hope you did something and thought, “Maybe it’s a start.”

Thank you for reading.

Amy

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A Puzzle Game

Other than work, I didn’t do a lot this week. I did walk into one room or the other at least once a day, aimlessly, trying to sort out what to do. The things that jump out are often small and concrete. They are not guaranteed to be immediately solvable and not guaranteed to make a difference, but these small actions give me the illusion that I am doing something.

I pulled all the files from a drawer to see what was there. Basically, this means I made new piles to deal with later. There are now three piles on the desk rather than zero piles.¹ I’m not sure this is progress. Reclaiming the drawer wasn’t necessary and isn’t important.

It just felt like something.

I think a lot of what I am doing is making and moving piles, shifting things between one pile and another. It is like those games where you need to move all the rings from one peg to another but can only stack them in order of decreasing size as you shuffle the rings, one at a time, between pegs.

I’ve played various iterations of these games, many more than three pegs, but the classic is the Tower of Hanoi.

The illustration makes me smile because the colorful tower reminds me of the chunky, plastic, rainbow-colored stacking rings we had when the boys were little.

Mathematically speaking, the challenge of the Tower of Hanoi is to move the whole stack, one ring at a time, in a minimum number of moves, which can be expressed as 2^n - 1, where n is the number of rings. With three rings, this can be accomplished in 7 moves. With four rings, it will take 15 moves. With 5 rings, the solution jumps to 31.

While we can all muddle through and eventually complete the transfer if we stick with it, it is harder than it sounds to solve the puzzle with the minimum number of moves. The complexity proliferates quickly. With ten rings, it will take 1023 moves.

Let’s go back to the fact that the chunky rainbow rings are cute, right?

The Tower of Hanoi is a good visual metaphor. It has clear rules. There are best practices. It is a good way to think about how we sometimes get overwhelmed by a task. Sometimes, a series of micro movements, one ring at a time, is better than no movement at all. At other times, we may need to ask ourselves if this is a game we even need to play.

Why can’t we just pick up the whole pile and move it?

Really, I am not worried about the official rules of the game, this life game I’m playing. I am not necessarily limited to stacking things in certain orders based on size or color. I’m just moving things around. It’s a tedious game. There are times when I work myself into a corner and have to start over. There are times when I move a few rings, breathe a sigh of relief, and then the camera zooms out, and I realize there are thousands of rings or, worse, dozens of disconnected towers, each with rings that need to be moved.

No wonder I am tired.

No wonder we sometimes lose sight of the beauty possible both in the close-up of the rings, the granular, item-by-item view, the memories lodged in files and folders, jackets and bags and mugs, and the wide view, all of those towers creating a map, a colorful hopscotch trail of living.

Would it be better if I really emptied the space and then started over? Maybe. But I’m stuck moving these piles, ring by ring. These piles are, of course, both literal and philosophical. There are little piles everywhere.

I fear I may be in a game where the piles are multiplying on their own, a game in which I can only survive if I clear piles fast enough to avoid being crushed or lost or drowned. The problem is that most days, I don’t want to play. My response is often to sit (when not working) and lose hours to mindless games and scrolling (although it’s lost its appeal) or even writing and rewriting these posts, tweaking words and small details as if they matter.

When I think of the piles, I almost immediately think of cairns, a different model of stacking and balance. That visual shift feels exciting. The rules of the game, the physics, the allowed moves, are different. The sense that the stacking itself is the source of beauty is enchanting.

That might just be me looking for something fun to draw, something to follow in words to put off the actual challenge of moving the piles.

I mention the files, which led to the piles, which opened up the recursive strategy needed to solve the Tower of Hanoi, because in one of the last files I opened, I found a Cheez-it.

It appeared to be white cheddar. It must be more than ten years old, maybe fifteen. I can’t quite wrap my head around how this Cheez-it survived there, tucked away in a file folder all these years.

A Gadget

I did one more thing this week. Before the files, on another day, I chose another pillar of rainbow colored rings that seemed easy, a game in progress that just needed to be finished, regardless of how many extra moves it took. I emptied a small utility cart that had been bedside to hold some of the endless amounts of stuff that accumulate when living with chronic illness, when living in a way where everything needs to be within reach.

I had cleared many things from the cart in the last three months, but it still wasn’t empty. (This is the real-world problem with the Tower of Hanoi, especially when there are lots of rings and lots of pegs. Towers are left in varying states of transfer, puzzles unfinished.) I took everything left in the cart and filled a box, a new pile of a sort.

One of the things I found was a mystery.

I found this little tool. It has a flexible neck and a handle with a single slide switch and a button. The other end looks like the top of a small football field goal.

It was in a box, and when I took it out, I initially thought it might be some kind of little electric razor or maybe even something related to electrolysis. Neither of those ideas totally made sense with the shape of the tool, but we’re way out of my element here.

Thank goodness I was careful. I slid the power switch on and then pressed the button and was shocked when purple electricity arced between the two sides. Electricity?

I wanted to post a photo and see if anyone knew what it was. But, really, that’s just the longing for connection. I can’t trick myself that way.

I knew I could just upload the image to Google and let it tell me what it is. Google, really, has all the answers. I don’t need to ask questions that warrant a LMGTFY reply.² (I should keep a Dear Data-eque log of all the things I look up in a week.)

I thought about the mystery tool a few times, but I didn’t look it up. What if I shared a photo of it, and it was something embarrassing? (I spent years debating what was and wasn’t my story, so much so that most of the story was lost. It surprises me to realize I still have concerns, that this is something I am still tiptoeing around.)

When I finally snapped a photo, intending to both look it up and draw it, I noticed the brand name and headed to Google. Mystery solved.

An electric candle lighter.

I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. It’s all just so silly. That it’s a candle lighter surprised me almost as much as if it really had been some crazy electrolysis tool. (Good tweezers go a long way.)

In looking up the electric candle lighter, I learned that the purple I saw was, in fact, an arc of plasma (or ionized gas). Who knew!

The Cheez-it puzzled me almost as much as the lighter.

How could there possibly be an intact Cheez-it in the file drawer for more than a decade?

I feel overwhelmed. The staggering weight of the logistics are getting to me. I’m not answering the phone (because hounding has started).

In the face of the overwhelm, the little discoveries, the oddities, the absurdities…these are the things that catch my attention and sometimes break through.

I am fine in some ways.
But I am very not fine in others.

I worry sometimes about being fine.

This week, I realized I am watching myself be very not fine.

If you talked to me, you would probably get the impression that I am fine.

I’m Fine

On Sunday morning, I needed to drop my oldest at the train station. We sat at the first intersection, and I didn’t even realize we sat through the entire green turn light, unmoving, until I saw it change to red. There was no traffic, or there would have been honking. It’s a really long intersection. It’s not one you want to sit through twice.

I got him to the train station, drove back home, averted my gaze from scary basement things, and logged in to run my drawing group.

Unless you have to get in the car with me, in which case we will sit through green lights and miss turns or take wrong roads, despite using the maps app, you’ll probably think I’m fine.

I have spent more than a decade compartmentalizing and keeping the world normal, but to what end?

Being fine, presenting myself as fine in all kinds of non-fine moments, has gotten me nowhere.

I think I’m tired of having to be fine, but I’m not sure there is an alternative. I’m not finding whatever it is that will help.

Some days, I sit and think, “It’s now been x weeks, and I haven’t figured out how to do xyz.”

Others think pressuring me will help, think solving this problem is as simple as a phone call:

Have you heard from x? (No.)
Have you heard from y? (Yes, to tell me life is too busy.)
Well you need to call z.
You need to meet some people.

I’m in a bad mood. It was a bad week in an amorphous, dark cloud way. There were some firsts. I’m in a bad mood, but it’s more than that. I’m leaking. I’m endlessly leaking. It is the endless leaking that has made me realize, really, I’m not okay.

But I did try something this week.

I went to a (virtual) grief group. It’s the first time I’ve ever sat in on a support group of any kind. This is one of the only free options I turned up. It’s during my work day, and I almost didn’t log in. It wasn’t great timing, and I was afraid I would be the only one there. But, I did it. I logged in. I introduced myself. I listened. I’m not sure it’s the right fit. I think I need something a bit different, but I’m giving myself a gold star for showing up.³

(Interesting post on grief groups.)

Illustrate Your Week, Week 34 of 2024

Everyone knows that portraits are my favorite thing to draw. My journal pages and sketchbooks are full of portraits, but I don’t draw small portraits. I don’t draw from life, and I tend to be choosy about the muse photos I draw. Even so, I drew images of some of the speakers while watching the Democratic National Convention this week. I didn’t “capture the likeness” of most of them, but it felt good to sit and focus on the lines while I listened. (As I’ve been doing for the last many months, I drew directly and loosely in colored pencil, no erasing, and then inked the portrait. The final two larger portraits are colored pencil only. I didn’t get to the inking.)

It was an emotional week. On some level, I’m hunkering, just as I feared I might. On other levels, I think I'm trying too hard. I think I’m disappointed.

Throughout the week, I keep reminding myself that I have to shift this narrative and find the positive. Maybe I’ll light a candle.

I’ve got just the tool for the task.

🎯 The Sunday post is free to all readers. There is a bit of “extra” again this week for those who are paid subscribers. (This is not an essay. It’s just “more.”)

Weekly Bits and Pieces

• Prompts for Illustrate Your Week - Week 35

• Diary List Comics / 52 Weeks

• Extra bits for paid subscribers

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Made It?

Thank you for reading. I appreciate your comments. Let me know what stands out for you, what you think after reading, or where we connect.

Last week I wrote about my plan to document a collection of teddy bears. These are not childhood bears. These are not bears that were played with. But teddy bears bring something magical to the table, no matter what the history. I enjoyed hearing from you about your special bears, bears lost or found, repaired, given, or cherished. I love knowing that some of you have drawn or painted or memorialized special bears. These stories always accentuate our similarities.

(I took to heart the feedback to use separate paper rather than committing the bears to the jumble of my journal. Still trying to figure out what I might use.)

This week:

• Tell me about something you discovered recently (or along the way) that surprised you.

• Tell me you remember wooden peg puzzles on the tables in restaurants as a kid and that you remember jumping those golf tees over and over trying to end up with just one left.

• Tell me what one thing you will draw (or write) this week — and then plan to do it.

I am grateful for readers like you.

Thank you for reading Illustrated Life. Please consider subscribing to receive the weekly email. Writers need readers, and I am grateful for every reader!

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Note: All photos and images in this post are original, by A. Cowen. All rights reserved.

1. I am such a fan of people who can draw piles, capture whatever ordinary, clutter-filled scene is in front of them, people like Steven Reddy and Paul Heaston. (Old podcast episode about Steven Reddy’s book.)

2. Let me Google that for you.

3. Linda Epstein wrote, weeks ago, about gold stars. I’ve felt, several times, recently, that I needed a gold star. I’m pretty good about telling myself I deserve a gold star. I think it’s important for all of us to do this. I think of the “badges” post, too.

Badges, Lumberjanes, and Gamification