Time has come again for the yearly tabulation and inventory of my life. I have spent the past two weeks staring at, sorting, and being stuck on the tidbits that make up me. It doesn’t help my cause to be a Virgo. I have high expectations of organization.
Possible story ideas, past paper craft projects. and instructions for my kid’s transformers all have a file. And I was going to organize these and thus myself, dammit. I wanted and needed to make hanging folders for everything. But I stood there moving the files around the table not making any progress. Then I abandoned the task for my lunch date.
Two days later, I still haven’t gotten back to the completion of that file project. For that matter, I have all sorts of layers of unsorted issues cum stuff lurking in the extra spaces of my house. What is it about these tasks that get us crazy and dreadful? And what is it about compartmentalizing the past in boxes and albums and folders that allows us to move forward and onward?
“Looking forward” means I’ve created a clean slate. I’ve sorted my past and decided what it meant and chosen to live now with my eye hopefully on the future. Right? But if I’m unable to make sense and let go of what has transpired, I am incapable of thinking about the next step. Much less deciding what’s for dinner.
It’s a choice to look toward the skyline to what might be there for me rather than to look back at where I’ve come from and crash the car. Yesterday, I committed to the painful decision to discard/recycle the stack of Christmas themed magazines . And I intend to say yes to pushing through that first hard half hour of my sort to get to the caramel center of the filing. Right after I take down my crunchy Christmas tree.
I accept that evolution means I can change my mind about the meaning of my life from moment to moment, day to day, week to week, decade to decade. A good friend said, “Life’s organic”. Parts of my past belong in a compost heap to fertilize the future. And parts deserve to be stuck in a scrapbook and revered for their life changing magic. Save the best, ditch the rest. Happy organizing America.
