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I never said, ‘I want to be alone.’ I only said, ‘I want to be left alone.’ There is all the difference.

– Greta Garbo

It’s not that I don’t like people. I just don’t like reading their email newsletters, or their Facebook promotions. Well, some of them anyway.

In my quest over the past few years to establish myself as a writer and, for a while, as an event planner, I signed up for multiple lists, multiple online magazines. They would all be helpful, I surmised.

And I suppose they might be had I the time to read them. Which, as you may have surmised, I do not.

So, one by one, I’ve been unsubscribing. From event planning lists. From contest lists. From travel lists. And from political, oh yes, from political lists.

Along the way I’ve been cleaning out my email. I deleted or filed over 5,000 emails in the last week. If I’ve not read something since 2013, I really don’t need to hang onto it.

I gave up the event planning lists because of a revision in a strategy. For over twenty years since I left my job as a meeting and event planner in Washington, DC, I’ve dreamed of my own event company. And if that didn’t happen, I dreamed of my own event planning website and magazine where I was the expert.

That wasn’t happening either.

Reality is, my focus has changed. Away from politics. Away from meeting planning.

And, yes, the meeting planning I did in DC was very political. I was, in fact, planning an event at the first Bush White House the day I got the call that our son was on his way. A month early.

That’s another story. I’m no longer in DC and no longer planning events at the White House. And, very definitely, not having more children.

So, I started taking my name off the lists.

I did strike a nerve with a friend who almost immediately wrote and asked “was it something I wrote?”

Not at all my friend. It’s just that your emails are political, and I’m out of that business. We agreed to keep in touch as friends, if not co-conspirators.

I’ve said goodbye as well to the dream of the event company.

“Historic Occasions: Celebrating the past, Creating the future.”

It was a great concept. But not one that I’ll continue to pursue.

And that’s okay.

It’s all a part of simplifying life. It’s all a part of getting rid of the clutter. A part of focusing on the things that are important.

Ironically, this past weekend I committed to co-produce two rather large events this year.

Too bad my company can’t offer a proposal.

For now this post is about decreasing the clutter. I’ve cleaned out my email. I’ve made progress on the Facebook feed.

If only the garage were this easy.

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