• Posted on:July 23rd, 2008
• Comments:No Comment
• Category:My Every Day

I’ve been cleaning house.

After moving all of my crud out of Hancock, I was hit with the sad truth that I have accumulated a lot of crap over the past few years. The boxes and piles of stuff that now sit scattered around the house are a far cry from the minimal belongings I had when I moved here three years ago.

It’s everywhere. Clothes are scattered because there are no drawers or closets to put them. I’m also sitting atop a pile of yarn that I think is embarrassing, and that’s because of the mass quantity, not because half of it is, um, cheap acrylic (hey, we all go through these phases).

I have two bikes that probably equal half of my net worth combined, and because we don’t have a garage, they’re sitting on the front porch. They’re only missing the sign that says, hey, come steal me! It will only take a few minutes! Maybe if I have time later, I’ll print one out.

When I initially became unemployed oh so many months ago, I viewed it as an opportunity to get my house in order. I was going to be an organizing machine. Because really, what else was there to do if I wasn’t working?

All I can say about those ambitions is FAIL, FAIL, FAIL.

It’s not that I haven’t been slowing chipping away at the mountain. I’ve made a little progress since officially giving up my own space, mostly with the office space (hey, a girl’s gotta have a place to read blogs work).

And you know, it’s tedious to go through everything you own and decide if it stays or goes. Unfortunately, I SUCK at this. I have this unfortunate obsession with saving original packaging. For almost everything. I know this probably makes sense for items like computers, cameras, and other electronic thingamajigs that might require the original packaging to obtain warranty coverage. And maybe I just made that last thing up, but it COULD be true.

The bluetooth headset incident last night made me realize that one of the reasons the dogs feast on all of my belongings is that they are often left in places they can reach, BECAUSE I AM A SLOB. And as I come up on my one year anniversary of being one of the jobless, I couldn’t help but remember that oath I made to clean up my shit.

I pried myself away from the computer, grabbed the iPod and got to work.

As I was cleaning today, I came across something that made me laugh, something I’ve saved since that shitty year known as The Year I Got Divorced. It was an email from a friend who had some advice for me, and this is what he wrote:

When one is diving and you want to get to the surface, you slowly release your weights so you can do a steady rise without getting the bends. Figure out what weights you want to drop and rise steadily. When I was a lifeguard, one summer I had to rescue eight people who were drowning. One guy I literally had to punch in the gut when he grabbed on to me trying to take me down with him.

I have often thought of this since then, whenever I’ve felt bogged down. Sometimes it’s a negative attitude, or an excuse to not do something I know is going to be good for me. In some instances, it’s been caustic relationships people, preventing me from moving on and forward with my life.

And even though I can recognize how detrimental these things are in my life, I have a hard time letting go. I find myself hanging on, even if it’s only by a thread as they say. Maybe I’m emotionally attached, or still full of resentment, or simply afraid. Afraid that once I let go, I will no longer be able to use it as an excuse for my shortcomings.

And I have more than emotional baggage. As I sort through the embarrassing amounts of clothing that have to be put in the if I lose 20 lbs box I know I am physically weighed down as well. I get discouraged by what I consider failure — not being able to do the things I could do three years ago — and I know it’s not because I’m three years older, but because the demand I’m putting on my body with this extra weight is killing it. So yeah, sometimes the weight is actual weight.

Well, it’s time. And while this might sound silly to you, the first step was to start eliminating the physical objects still lingering from the part of my past that I need to move on from. It started with running photos through the paper shredder. I know burning them would have been more exciting symbolically, but I have a bad track record with fire. And this was huge, something that a year or two ago, I would never have been able to do.

I think I can call that progress.

There were a few more items I found today, and while I won’t go into detail about them publicly, they needed to be thrown away. And I did it. And then I put dog poop on top of them so that I wouldn’t be tempted to dig them out tomorrow. Just kidding. Well, about the not being tempted part.

The last thing I will do today is take that email, the one that I’ve saved for all these years, and put it in the trash with everything else. Because while I am thankful for the advice, I’m letting go of all of it.

And finally, after all of these years, I’m starting to feel lighter.