Prune and Grow

Courtesy of Jessica Arends (@mydailydestinations) via Unsplash.

Last week, I spent over half of my quarterly week off doing plant care. (If you just realized I’m going to be talking about plants and are tempted to click away, stick with me—I’m making a point.)

Like many people, my pandemic hobby was to become good at caring for houseplants. Though I’ve had plants my whole life, the ones that had made it that long were those that thrived on neglect. With the boom in YouTube plant gurus and a new-to-me home with plenty of sunlight indoors in 2021, I figured it was high time to learn how to properly care for not only those plants that had survived by luck alone, but a few more that I would like to own without replacing every year or so.

The end result is that I have quite a few houseplants—forty-one, by current counts, and that doesn’t include those I’m currently water propagating. So regular tasks and plant care actually take a fair amount of time.

(Not that I’m complaining. I love being surrounded by green and to regularly get my hands dirty, even when the ground outside is still frozen and covered in snow.)

One of the things I’ve learned as a plant parent is the value of pruning. If a plant has been struck by disease, pests, or has become sickly through poor watering and care practices, sometimes the best thing you can do for that plant is to cut off all the affected parts. This can sometimes mean cutting back almost everything above the soil.

It can be quite terrifying the first time you chop a plant so far back that you’re not sure it will survive. (And please do your research first, as not every plant will survive!) But once the plant is no longer burdened by the diseased portions and is given proper care and treatment, it usually doesn’t take long for it to bounce back, fuller and healthier than ever.

As it so happens, the other half of my week was spent doing a completely different type of pruning—pruning my digital footprint.

With the added attention my website has been getting lately, I noticed a very peculiar type of traffic on the rise. Oddities like this tend to crank up my anxiety, especially these days. Honestly, I’m still not sure what the people (or, more likely, bots) behind this traffic are trying to accomplish, but after consideration, I realized that it was high time I did some pruning to some of my older content.

As part of that, I’ve temporarily put this blog behind a free paywall while I “prune” some older posts that no longer serve my purpose. And although I’m experiencing some grief and anger at this situation, there is also a certain amount of relief, and a lightening of a mental load—like the feeling you get after you spring clean your home and get rid of the clutter.

I’m getting rid of digital clutter, and it comes with the same mixed feelings as parting with physical items that no longer “spark joy,” as Marie Kondo says.

Yes, it’s a big project. But the further I progress through it, the gladder I am that I’m doing it.

In our modern look-at-me, influencer culture, decluttering your digital footprint can seem so counter-intuitive. But, much as I know the work I put into my plants will reap a fuller, healthier indoor jungle, so do I expect this digital pruning to produce a better balance for me, my mental health, and even my brand as an author and creator.

Have you ever thought about decluttering your digital footprint—or actually done it? Did you regret doing it, or regret leaving it so long? What were your experiences? Let me know in the comments!

Blog Post: Prune and Grow.