Thursday, June 3, 2010

boxes

I love packing.

One of my favorite George Carlin routines is about our stuff. Our addiction to and accumulation of stuff. And that's the truth, if I didn't have so much ***damn stuff, I wouldn't need a house.

But we don't have a whole lot of stuff; we have more than a little but far less than most families I know. As Carlin points out, people move to have more room for more stuff. That's not us.

I've always been pretty anal about not letting our possessions get out of hand. The home I grew up in was always outrageous when it came to that. Everything we wanted to keep, things we thought we might need to keep, and everything else we were too lazy to actually sort through just sat in piles all throughout the house. These piles grew and grew and got shoved into corners, against walls, and forgotten on staircases. Watch an episode of "Hoarders." We weren't that far off from needing an intervention, ourselves.

I moved out of my house for the third the last time when I was 22 and I made a vow to myself to never, EVER, get buried in crap again.

Still, here I am with my life, my stuff, in boxes, and I know this moving process would be a whole lot easier if there weren't so many to fill. I just get endlessly annoyed at the decision-making that goes into sorting, packing, and moving. What's this? When was the last time I used/wore it? Is it my husband's? One of his exes? What the fuck is he doing still holding on to an old book of hers, anyway? And a how-to book about love?! Ha!! Obviously that wasn't of any help!

Wait, what were we talking about?

For the most part, I'm actually a thrower-away-er, sometimes to a fault. As per the nature of this blog, allow me to make another comparison between running and my life. Running: Moving quickly in one direction, not looking back (Except maybe on an out-and-back route, which I usually hate. I much prefer a loop.). You can't hold onto shit during a run. Hot spots? You can take off your sneakers and rub your feet or you can keep running. Sore legs? You can go home and pop a couple Advil or you can keep running. Hitting a wall? You can sit down and give up or keep running. Just not feeling it today? You can wallow in the reasons why or you can keep fucking running.

So when it comes to my life, I try not to hold on or hold back. Anything that conjures up sentiments I wish to retire, I throw away. Things that bear no relevance to my current situation, I toss. If it brings me back to a place I don't want to be anymore, it goes buh-bye. Whether it's two-week-old cheese that might still be OK or fifteen-year-old wrinkled and humidity-stained notebooks with song lyrics scrawled on the covers and "poetry" (read: Pre-teen Angst-ridden Lamentations) squeezed in between pages of biology notes.

Each mile is not the same as the one before it, and can not be run if you do not allow yourself to pass from one mile to the next. So go the pages of life.

1 comment:

Summer said...

I hate moving too, and I'm also beginning to learn the joys of letting go, rather than holding onto crummy, dusty mementos of my youth. I simply don't have the space to hold onto it all anymore.