urbpan | 3:00 snapshot #763

Can you believe that we aren't totally out of our old place yet? Last night we dragged out a bunch of furniture to the sidewalk for today's yard sale (the whole street has a big yard sale once a year). I can't fully express how painful the experience of moving is for me. Here we are months later, and I still go into this place every couple of weeks and shuffle boxes around, find papers and objects that are heavy with sentiment and meaning, maybe throw out a bag of stuff, and leave feeling sad and depressed. It's a mental illness I'm sure, to be so attached to material things, but without them how would we know that we lived a life? How can I remember that people love me without notes written on paper? How can I prove what I was doing ten, fifteen, twenty years ago--that I was expressive and engaged, that my personality is what I pretend it is? Part of me wants to dispose of it all without even looking at it, to be purely who I am now and prove to myself that I'm worthwhile without piles of dusty papers and once beloved trinkets. But part of me wants to preserve it all as a museum of who I was, and the time and place where I lived, in case that ever becomes important.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

That sucks. An organized person I met had taken binders and sheet protectors and put all his letters and ephemera from the past in them. I was impressed. Dumpster? Stimulants? A couple of friends and I are helping each other go through our stuff and our dead relatives' stuff. Having another person there can help break the spell. Actually it sounded like you had a great system, one that has worked for me many times; Put stuff in the basement, basement floods, stuff gets wrecked, throw stuff away. Good luck. Keep focused and go forward, eventually it'll be over. Sorry it's rough.

My method is time consuming. It would be better to use a garden hose and just soak all those things in the old apartment, then use a pitchfork to huck it all out the window.

I laughed.

3:00 snapshot #763

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Dumpster? Stimulants?

Re: Dumpster? Stimulants?