possessions

I am working my way through a stack of boxes that I have been ignoring for months. Where the hell does all this stuff come from? Truly, it's rather overwhelming...

I have boxes full of manuscripts, teaching materials, evaluations, old photographs, pages torn from magazines, pdf files of obscure texts, articles of interest. I have boxes full of old art supplies in various stages of use and decay. I have an obscene number of paper clips and, I can't believe I'm going to write this, I think perhaps I have too many shoes.

I ignore these things because it is easier than dealing with them (or that's what I tell myself, despite the evidence to the contrary). But lately, I can't ignore this stuff any longer. It's all making me feel crazy. I feel anxious and on the verge of tears just looking at it all, though paper shredding has proved to be surprisingly cathartic.

What's interesting, though, is that my anxiety and such is not produced by nostalgia, or even any memories attached to these objects. They are just objects in space, most of which have been boxed up long enough to prove they hold no special significance. But they exert control over me somehow and I find it hard to decide what to keep, recycle, throw away, give away. I overthink everything.

I find I construct scenarios in which said object might be useful (one day I might want to show someone the array of flyers and postcards I produced during my bookselling and event planning days, right? no? oh...) or hang onto things I might at some point wish to consider using in class. Even the desktop of my computer is littered with icons for websites I found interesting and might want to return to... I open seventeen tabs at a time, because, you know, there are all kinds of things I don't want to forget might be cool, or useful, or odd, or lovely.

It's madness! And this madness must be brought to its end. My work, possibly over the next several weeks, is to unburden myself of everything that really doesn't matter. I don't truly care about this stuff. I sometimes fantasize about having a Fire Sale. As in, please buy my shit before I set fire to it, because, frankly, I could use the money and I have to get out from under all these objects. Suffice to say that my work is cut out for me.