When I'm Anxious

My clothes where I can see them. I just love the precision.


I apologize in advance because this experiment really is as anal as it looks.

I notice, when I am anxious, as I was about all of my work this week - the book I am writing for myself, the book I am writing about Ukrainian style, an article for a new Minneapolis publication (Artful Living), my first for them and even staying on top of my design work. So, when I feel out of control in all those pressing areas of my life, I have to find something completely concrete to work out in the material world. My work this week was so in my head - working on budgets, researching Chanel for the article, facing my terror about sending my own manuscript out to publishers and feeling shamefully behind the eight ball on this other book. So, all of those thoughts were making me mad - not angry, but crazy.

So I took the day off (after putting final touches on the magazine article) and dug in to purge my closet here in NY. It is a nightmare. Well, kind of a nightmare. Not a nightmare like a nuclear holocaust would be a nightmare, but it is difficult. We have one deep closet, about 3 feet wide with two rods. ONE HUNG BEHIND THE OTHER. Not top bottom where you could at least see things if you had a stepladder. MY THINGS HUNG BEHIND LEE'S and his rod was packed full of his clothes. So I felt like I was entering a sartorial forest everytime I had to get dressed. I had a machete to whack through his layer of clothing, before I finally got to my paltry collection 4 feet back without a light and all my clothes are black! I could never find a thing. I wore only what I had thrown on the chair by the bed. It was too much work to get dressed.

So, I tackled this problem with gusto. I bought a rolling rack, had it delivered and then bought nice new hangers. I put the rolling rack in the only 6 square feet in the room that we don't HAVE to walk and filled it with my clothes in a nauseatingly anal way. By color on matching hangers. Of course, by color for me means almost nothing since all of my clothes were black. This was easy. If somethiing was just too garish - like my one orange t-shirt, I just hung it in the regular closet because I couldn't stand the imperfection of the hanging rack.

I'm owning that I was nutty. I needed control and perfection in one simple aspect of my life since everything else seemed to be beyond my control. So I share with you now my closet - it looks like a damn installation or rack in a store - well, I did do retail for many years. My inner Virgo is showing. Enjoy. These clothes will all be on the chair or floor by the week's end.

I would love to hear what you all do when you get anxious!