Red's Wrap
Happiness. It's relative.
Clutter is Another Word for Everything Left to Lose
The picture of the hell that is my office at the moment comes later. It’s too shocking to have pop up right away. Here’s a nice selfie I took today. I really like those earrings.
You see, I’ve been working in this office for twenty-nine years, ever since I quit my dream job in a community action agency because the board went berserk and hired a terrible person from out of state to be the executive director.
Everything I’ve done – professionally and personally (as in this blog) has happened in this office. There are layers of reports and grant proposals and data along with stories my granddaughter (now 17) wrote when she was six or seven. I remember those nights of her sitting up here in my big office chair typing her little weird stories – she had little fictional friends dancing all over the desk.
So, today, I started making the really hard decisions. Like, should I throw out the interview notes for my dissertation research from 1984? I did. Reluctantly.
Should I throw out two issues of the Desert Sun that had front page stories from twenty years ago written by my daughter about firefighters in which she, herself, had donned firefighting equipment and gone into a burning building so she could write about it? No. I put the papers in an envelope to send to her. Seriously, who could throw that out?
This downsizing business is not all about knickknacks, my friends.
Speaking of which, what do I do about my mother’s little ceramic owl?
Also, for a long time, my sons have given me stuffed animals for presents. I don’t know why. I don’t ask. I just say thank you – the stuff animals are always extremely cute – and put them on my shelf. But now, there they are. Several lambs (lamb being a big theme), a couple of monkeys, and so on. You get the drift.
Okay. Are you ready for the clutter picture? This was midstream. The desk looks a lot better now. Not really. As my husband would say, “I’m workin’ on it.”
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Snow Door | wisconsinacademy.org
Listen to Jan read her essay “Billy” presented on WUWM’s Lake Effect
Jan’s essay “At the Breakfast Bar” on WUWM Lake Effect
Jan’s essay “The Parish Hall,” on WUWM Lake Effect
“Fury Cannot Touch Me,” Modern Love, NYT, 9/29/11
Be brave ! it’s so hard, isn’t it …
I am a tosser pure and simple. I have a box with bits and pieces of the past. The rest as they say is history, but really just fading memories that meant something long ago but not enough of something that I want my kids to have to deal with in the end.
I’m in the middle of a huge downsize myself. When I’m faced with something about which I’m torn, I ask myself a question: If I never saw or held this item again, would I miss it? If the answer is “yes,” I keep it and find a home for it. If the answer is “I don’t know,” I put it aside to ask again in a week. But if the answer is “No,” then out it goes. Granted, that might not work as well when it comes to papers and the like.
Ask me again in a year to see how much stuff “made the cut.” Good luck to you!
Jan, I winced when you mentioned the dissertation interviews. Such painful decisions to make.
For me it’s all the stuff from years working in applied anthropology.
But…..I couldn’t bear to throw out my prelims. I read them and thought – how the heck did I do this? So, they stay. At least for the time being.
I don’t think I’m ready to throw out my dissertation interviews (tapes and transcripts). Maybe I could throw out the tapes because I don’t think I could find a machine to play them. Maybe I don’t want to listen to them.
A lot of my fieldwork as an applied practitioner of anthropology is about the social history of the communities, craftsman, and traditional art. I’m afraid that just tossing them is unfair to the communities and individuals. But, finding a home for them may be hard.