The Zen Leaf

KonMari Wrap-up: Lessons Learned

Posted on October 2, 2015 by Thistle

I’ve learned quite a bit over the last few months, and have talked about many of those lessons through multiple posts now. Though I’m not entirely done with the Great Tidy-My-Life Project, this will likely be my last KonMari post**, and for it, I want to address some of the additional things I’ve learned along the journey so far.

1. Happiness needs to be a bigger factor in all the parts of my life. This project helped me to quit a career path I hated, and start the process of moving in a direction I love. I’m not there yet, but it’s a start.

2. Happiness is as important, if not more so, than functionality. I grew up poor, with a heavy emphasis on the cheap and functional, with no excess waste. Choose the cheapest functional items and use them until they cannot be used longer, even if you don’t like an item or using it becomes inconvenient. This is why I kept using an old, discolored purse with fraying seams and missing zipper pulls; lotion that didn’t smell/feel good; and coffee mugs that were cracked or too small.

But you know what? I’m more likely to use lotion, makeup, or lip balm if it’s the right scent, texture, and/or color for me. And it’s okay to dispose of and replace worn/damaged things, even if I could get more use from them. It’s okay to combine happiness with the functional. I can spend a few more cents to buy Dixie cups with a design I like instead of the plain versions, just as it’s always been worth it to me to spend extra on things that are important to me (pillows, notebooks, journals, etc). And so I have.

3. It’s wonderful to have joy all around me, but this does not mean replacing everything, nor does it mean doing all replacements immediately. I’ve always been a bit of a minimalist, and if I seriously got rid of everything that didn’t spark joy, I’d be in trouble! I’d have 2-3 outfits, no socks, no dining room chairs, no purse, no TV, no bookshelves, no bedsheets or hot pads or kitchen knives… There are some things I’d love to replace, and will, slowly over time, as we get the money for it, and as I find joy-sparking replacements. No point in replacing them before finding what does bring me joy! Instead, I’m making a list of replacements for the future.

4. It’s wonderful to experience life with so much more around me that makes me happy, yes. I never imagined just looking around my bathroom would bring me joy with every shampoo bottle, lipstick, and lotion. Awesome. At the same time, I’ve realized it’s okay to have some purely-functional items around. My TV, for instance, will never bring me joy. I love having it, and using it, but just seeing the physical object does nothing for me – and no TV ever will. Some items are just like that. Medicine bottles. Filed tax returns. The lawn mower. Tape and staples and USB flash drives. And that’s okay. These functional things help to highlight all the joy, and also, it’s kinda fun to see if I can turn some functionals into joy-things. Like Dixie cups or Kleenex boxes and cloth-wraps for my iced coffee mason jars. Ha!

5. I love coffee mugs and I don’t care if I have way more than I actually need! Bring on the coffee-mug-joy!!

6. Looking at my bookshelves makes me sad. I was a bit ruthless with my book-culling, and while I don’t regret specifics, I know I didn’t KonMari the way I ought to have. I made head-decisions, not heart-decisions, probably because I knew I can be a little too attached to books-in-general. (As noted at that link, I based decisions not on whether a book brought me joy, but whether it brought me joy and I still needed a physical copy. Oops.) Some decisions, I rectified before it was too late, like keeping my original battered mismatching copies of Harry Potter rather than the newer, prettier, matching copies that I’ve never even opened. But I don’t like my current bare, wilted shelves. I hope to someday soon replace the shelving units themselves with a larger, brighter wall-o-shelves, and to slowly acquire plenty more bundles of book-joy to fill in these vast, vast, vast empty spaces.

That’s about it. As I said, I’m not entirely done with the KonMari process. I’m still learning about joy, still crawling out from old habits and fears. But these last two months have taught me tons, and I know these lessons will stay with me for a very long time.

**Actually there might be one more post, as I’m going through the whole process again in a truncated way, but there might not be one more, because I don’t yet know if I’ll find/do enough a second time around to fill an entire post. This is a “just in case” clause. Ha!

Posted in Book Talk, Wellness | Tagged KonMari | 7 Comments

Wellness Wednesday #5: Deferred

Posted on September 30, 2015 by Thistle

To be honest with you all, I am not well. Not by any stretch of the imagination. For months now, I’ve been sleeping poorly, attacking myself with food/wine binges, and having complete emotional breakdowns that seem to come out of nowhere. My counselor here has been of no help to me whatsoever and I’m still in the process of finding a new one. Without that outside, objective point of view, I couldn’t understand why this was happening. Yes, the last eighteen months have been worse than hell, but I survived, and things are getting better! So why have I suddenly lost my f–ing mind??

A week ago, as I lay curled up on the floor under a towel in the shower, hot water streaming over me as I bawled my eyes out for hours, something clicked. I finally understood. It’s like in my novel, Summer Rain, when my narrator cannot cry at her grandmother’s funeral. She says:

I should have cried a year ago when she had that first stroke. That’s the moment I really lost my grandmother. But I didn’t, because back then, it was an emergency, it was all need: I have to get to her, I have to get home, I have to help. I didn’t have time to grieve.

Deferred grief. As I said, I’ve been to hell and back in the last couple years. I was gutted multiple times, but had no time to stop and take care of the wounds. Slap on an industrial-grade bandaid (*coughZoloftcough*) and keep pushing forward. Now that the crisis has passed and I can pull off the bandages, the wounds are much worse for the waiting.

I say that I’m on a brand new journey, but in reality, I’m not nearly as healthy as I’d need to be for any journey, old or new. Whenever I give myself a challenge, no matter how simple, I fail within days (sometimes within hours). I cannot do anything for myself right now. I’ve become an emotional invalid, and I know that I can’t even begin to heal until – at very minimum – I stop using the knife that flayed me to inflict further injury.

So that has to become my focus right now, I suppose. Not on getting better; just on not getting any worse. Time to put down the knife and treat the wounds, and try to survive the ensuing pain. At least I understand the cause now, and I’ve found that understanding the roots of my behavior/emotions often helps me to correct and overcome negative actions/responses. We’ll see.

True Confessions
I have no idea what it means to be kind to myself. My counselor in Massachusetts was trying to teach me, but I made a poor student. What does it mean to be kind to yourself when your current needs are directly opposed to your future needs? Which do you obey when there is literally no middle ground? Yeah. I suppose, in the meantime, if I can’t be kind to myself, I need to at least stop being cruel…

*****
Dear younger Manda,

You survived. You were broken, gutted, beaten, and ripped to bloody shreds, but you survived. Now, it is time to rest. This is the promise I make you: I may not know how, but I will learn to tend these wounds instead of making them worse. You did the painful work of surviving, and it’s my turn now. I will do my best not to hurt you again, and furthermore, to help you – help us – heal.

Love, modern-day Manda

Posted in Personal, Wellness, Writing | Tagged health, psychology, Wellness Wednesday, WTF moments | 13 Comments

Honor Girl, by Maggie Thrash

Posted on September 28, 2015 by Thistle

This is a graphic memoir recounting Maggie Thrash’s time at a Christian girls’ summer camp in Kentucky. She was fifteen and had never suspected she might be a lesbian. Then an encounter with a camp counselor that summer causes infatuation to bloom.

My experience with Honor Girl was mostly positive. I enjoyed the writing, art, and storytelling. At times, the sheer number of girls proved confusing. A name would pop up and I wouldn’t remember if I’d met that person before. After awhile, however, I just rolled with it, and it was easy to keep the main players straight. I loved the very real look at what had to be confusing emotions for the author, and the balanced way she presented others’ reactions. Additionally, for this being a conservative Christian camp, I was surprised (in a positive way) at the non-hysterical way that various people handled Thrash’s emotions/actions. Not saying they were all accepting, but I was expected a lot more rot-in-hell kinds of rants.

My only real dissatisfaction with the book actually has more to do with the genre. I generally avoid memoirs because so many of them feel open-ended and incomplete. These are real lives, and of course many stories are open-ended and incomplete. It’s nonfiction. I don’t expect the real world to act like fiction. Still, in book format, this tends to make me feel like there’s a cliff-hanger that will never be resolved.

I don’t regret this one, though, despite that small (expected) dissatisfaction. Honor Girl was excellent.

Posted in 2015, Visual, Young Adult | Tagged LGBTQIA, nonfiction | Leave a comment

Sunday Coffee – Comment Issues

Posted on September 27, 2015 by Thistle

After an extremely rough week emotionally and a few nights of very little/poor sleep, I don’t have much to bring to the table for this morning’s Sunday Coffee. I thought I’d take a quick moment, then, to address a WordPress problem I’ve had over the last few weeks. Perhaps some of you have experienced this, and might know how to fix it?

I first noticed a few weeks ago that there were comments on my posts that I hadn’t seen before. I’d received no email notifications that they’d arrived. They weren’t sitting in spam or anything. They published as usual. They just didn’t send me notifications. At first, I thought it was just from a specific commenter, because all the missing notifications came from one account (I thought). Then it started happening to all my commenters. It wasn’t unusual for a person to leave a series of comments on different posts and for me to only get notifications for half. I started having to check the comments portion of my dashboard instead of the posts themselves. And while this is doable, it’s also irritating, because I usually don’t respond to comments for a few days, and the new method causes me to get confused and skip/miss comments.

Is this anything that you’ve dealt with? I honestly don’t know if it’s a problem with WordPress or my gmail account…

I did have one fun story for the week. Remember how I was just talking about dressing for invisibility? This past Friday, I was dressed in black shorts and a grey shirt. Plain. Safe. That evening, I felt a little chilly (my cold has lingered on for nearly two weeks now…), so instead of getting a blanket, I put on some leggings under my shorts. It was quite 80s-chic – and I hate the 80s – but it was very comfortable, and I had no plans to go out again that evening. The boys and I were just having a night of popcorn and NCIS reruns.

Then some of the boys’ friends came over to ask if they could go outside to play, and I popped outside to talk to them while the boys got on their shoes. I totally forgot what I was wearing until I got back inside, and then I couldn’t stop giggling about it. Then again, the kids that were over were at that middle-school super-scrutinizing age/attitude, and they didn’t seem to notice, either. So it was kinda fun, and I might just do this more often as “fall” turns slightly more fall-like (ie. gets below 90 degrees). 😀

Now I’m off with the fam! Today is Siclovia, which I haven’t had a chance to attend in a few years. Hopefully the temps stay somewhat decent. Cross your fingers for us! 🙂

Posted in Personal | Tagged Sunday Coffee | 2 Comments

KonMari, Part VI: Storage

Posted on September 25, 2015 by Thistle

There are a couple of main principles to storage espoused in The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: Store only after all disposal is done. Stack vertically instead of horizontally. Don’t keep things tucked away in places you’ll never see or pull out. Store all stuff of a kind in a single location. Don’t bother with fancy storage solutions. Keep things simple, to make it easier to grab things and put them away. Make sure every single possession has a specific place it belongs.

Some of these rules were easier than others. For many reasons, it’s necessary in our house to have multiple locations for similar items, for example. Wherever I could, though, I attempted to follow these rules, with some fantastic results.

My closet shelf has now become my little place for sentimental books, journals, magazines, yearbooks, memorabilia, etc. I can see it all at a glance, instead of having it all tucked away in a trunk. My exercise equipment is on the floor next to my shoes, and (not visible here) my bags are up on hangers. In the future, I will add shelf space to my bedroom wall for stuffed-animal-and-Pony kinds of keepsakes.

In my bathroom, I have a shelf that keeps all my cosmetics and toiletries organized. Under my sink, there are now two bins – one for cleaning supplies, one for the small stock of extra bathroom stuff and medicines. Vertical storage ended up bringing me a lot of happiness in silly ways. For example, instead of keeping my cotton swabs in their bulk box on my counter, the box is now in my overstock bin under the sink, and I have a Dixie-cup full of swabs to keep on the counter! Much neater and certainly prettier, haha!

Kondo recommends using square/rectangular storage rather than circular or odd-shaped boxes. She also says that if an odd-shaped box brings you joy in and of itself, go ahead and use it. Well, this isn’t a box, but I have a few coffee mugs I love but don’t actually use (too small!). One is now holding all my pens on my desk; another all my long-tube makeup and makeup brushes in my bathroom. Yes!!

I used to have a set of drawers by my desk to hold papers, notebooks, and other random things. By the time I finished discarding, there was almost nothing left in them. Plus, I wanted vertical storage. Away went the drawers; in came a new end-table. The shelf holds my notebooks, planners, coloring books, colored pencils, post cards (to send), and tarot cards. The drawer has story cards, maps, and other odd-shaped things I use for novel-planning. On top, I keep an inbox for the things that I need to take care of (vertical inbox acquired since this photo was taken, yay!). I also have a space for my library books when they come in. I love this little table!! (And so does our older cat, Ash!)

The drawers I got rid of ended up holding all our DVDs and CDs. Unfortunately, this left my bookshelves particularly bare (the third, not pictured, is empty except for the boys’ library books!), and the drawers are not great for these heavier items. Honestly, I’d really like to replace the entire shelving and entertainment area at some point. Kristen’s shelves bring me particular joy just looking at them, and I can imagine something similar in my living room. One day.

Which brings me to lessons learned on this Great Tidy-My-Life Project adventure. But! That’s a topic for next week!

To wrap up today’s storage post, let me just say one thing. After I’d finished putting this all together, Jason was looking for the checkbook one morning. He thought I had it, because he last remembered giving it to me. I remembered giving it back, but he didn’t. I thought I might as well go through my stuff, just in case I’d left it in my desk drawer or purse. Except…everything has a place. I take everything out of my purse now. I can see everything in my desk drawer and I know the things in there. It only took a quick mental sweep to realize there was no point to me searching. I knew I didn’t have it. And I didn’t – we found it later with Jason’s stuff. The point is: I knew exactly where all my stuff was. Without having to look. And that is an awesome feeling.

Posted in Book Talk, Wellness | Tagged KonMari | 9 Comments

Wellness Wednesday #4: Invisible

Posted on September 23, 2015 by Thistle

With this whole KonMari project going on, I’ve been thinking a lot about happiness lately. Happiness and decision-making, happiness vs functionality, happiness in body image, etc. Today I want to discuss happiness, clothes, shame, invisibility, and PTSD.

True Confessions
Choosing and wearing clothes that make me happy is a relatively foreign concept for me. Generally, I’ve chosen clothes that are functional, practical, average, “normal,” muted, shielding, and that lend themselves to invisibility. No one pays attention to your clothes when you wear a plain t-shirt and generic jeans, you know? And if your clothes make you invisible, no one truly looks at you.

PTSD made invisibility a relief. All the bullying in adolescence changed me from a happy, confident extrovert to a silent, hyper-vigilant introvert. As a child, my parents laughingly nicknamed me “bucket-mouth” because I never shut up. In middle school, I would go days – weeks – only speaking if directly addressed by teachers. As an adult, I began to regain my natural extroversion, but I still strove for invisibility, especially when obese. One of my reasons for wanting to lose weight involved wishing to be visible/invisible by chose (impossible when morbidly obese).

I gained a certain amount of confidence as I lost weight, and began exploring my personal style. Mostly, though, I continued to dress nondescript. Clothing can make you super visible, and while I loved my style, it was too anxiety-inducing to dress that way all the time. My outfits, shoes, accessories, bags, and makeup continued to trend toward the invisible. One of the most difficult parts of the KonMari clothing portion was dealing with clothes that made me “safe” instead of “happy.” Nearly all my clothes fall into the former category. If I got rid of all the socks that didn’t bring me joy, for instance, I’d literally have no socks. My socks are practical and safe, not fun or joyous.

But I want my clothes to bring me joy. All my clothes. When I wear clothes that make me happy, I feel more confident, and love myself more – regardless of my size and regardless of what people think of me. It might take me some time to get to where I can dress this way all the time – clothes are expensive, and exposure is hard – but I hope to be there one day.

1. The only way I liked this first dress was with a jacket, making it look boyish. Never wore it in public. 2. Love cargo shorts/pants and clomper boots and boys’ clothing. 3. Loved this sleeveless sweater hoodie, too, but never managed to wear it outside the house.

1. This shirt was so much fun, but I knew I’d never wear it in public so I didn’t buy it. 2. I could only wear this dress for Halloween. 3. Loved this sweater, but the color made me too conspicuous, so I only wore it indoors.

1. Hoodie with built-in fingers, yay! 2. I never wore this hat in public despite loving it. 3. Not a fan of tights, but if I’d gotten the right leggings, this third outfit would have been fantastic, though still an indoors outfit…

1. Love layers but they make me feel fat and self-conscious. 2. This coat made me feel like Snape! But it also made me feel fat, so I never wore it. 3. Cargo pants and rusty-orange shirt made me feel fantastic but (again) too self-conscious. Sigh.

This is kinda like my personal fashion pinterest board, since I don’t actually have pinterest.

*****
Dear younger Manda,

I totally understand why you wear clothes that make you invisible. I understand your self-doubt, your fear of making fashion faux-pas, your fear of teasing and peer-abuse. If I could reach back in time and give you a long, long hug, I would. But let me tell you something important:

When you wear clothes that are “normal” or like everyone else, but that also make you uncomfortable, you are going to look uncomfortable. When you love the clothes you wear, regardless of what anyone else thinks about them, you’re going to feel fantastic. Take a chance, find what you love, and start living out loud. No matter your size. No matter how people judge you. No matter what anyone thinks. I know it’s hard to believe me, but really, people react far more to how you feel about what you’re wearing than to the clothes themselves.

Love, modern-day Manda

Posted in Wellness | Tagged body image, KonMari, psychology, Wellness Wednesday | 8 Comments

Top Ten Books on my Fall TBR

Posted on September 22, 2015 by Thistle

I’ve been listing my top ten seasonal TBR piles for the last year, and not once have I read more than 3-4 books off the list. Heh. Maybe this will be the season I break that pattern – especially since some of these are for RIP, and some are new books out by authors I love! In no particular order:

1. It was Me All Along by Andie Mitchell – Amanda from Fig and Thistle recommended this back when I reviewed Fat Girl Walking, and I hope it’s just as good!

2. Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? by Mindy Kaling – another blogger recommendation, this time from Allie of A Literary Odyssey, that I hope will be an awesome audiobook. **Also ETA: Allie’s list this morning reminded me that I didn’t put Winter by Marissa Meyer in my top ten TBR for this fall. I really ought to have – it would increase my changes of reading even more of the list!! Because that one will definitely be read.

3. The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern – my traditional RIP reread!

4. The Marvels by Brian Selznick – Yay for more Selznick!

5. Uprooted by Naomi Novak – another RIP read that thankfully is finally on its way to me from the library!

6. Honor Girl by Maggie Thrash – graphic novel memoir, so I’m not sure if it’ll work for me, but let’s hope so!

7. Career of Evil by Robert Galbraith – next in the series

8. Shadows of Self by Brandon Sanderson – While I’m a huge fan of this particular trilogy opener (Alloy of Law), I hope that it gets better, and I do love the world it’s set in.

9. Walk on Earth a Stranger by Rae Carson – new series opener

10. Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo – new series opener

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by The Broke and the Bookish.

Posted in Book Talk | Tagged lists | 2 Comments

Gentlemen and Players, by Joanne Harris

Posted on September 21, 2015 by Thistle

St. Oswald’s Grammar School for Boys has withstood so much, from curriculum modernization to the dwindling of funds to a series of scandals buried as deep as the Board of Governors can dig. Roy Straitly has been teaching Latin there for the last thirty-three years, and nothing, he thinks, can phase him. But there’s a newbie at St. Oswald’s, seemingly innocuous and hidden in plain sight, determined to bring out old scandals while destroying the school from within. Straightly and Snyde go head to head in alternating chapters of this cat-and-mouse game.

I first experienced this book back in September 2012, on audio, for a book club. The twists in it blew me away, and I ended up going back to read it a second time in print. I wasn’t really reviewing books at the time, so my thoughts on the book consisted of only a sentence or two. My plan was to reread this one for RIP this year and mini-review it with some other rereads near the end of the event. However, a great chunk of my potential RIP reads didn’t end up working for me, and after a bunch of misses, I decided to download the audio of G&P and re-listen. Yes, despite the fact that I’d just read it. In other words, I’ve literally read this book twice in print and listened twice on audio in the last three years. Why, you may ask? Well, this (my favorite quote) might give you a hint:

A pity he has to go, really; but as my old dad might have said, you can’t make an omelet without killing people.

The whole book is filled with a light morbid humor that has me giggling constantly. Much of the narration reminded me of Nabokov’s work, which is not praise I hand out often or lightly. The characters are immaculately drawn, and I sympathize with them all (even the sociopath). I loved the back-and-forth narration, getting inside the heads of both narrators, especially the unreliable narrator. I can’t say much about the plot without giving away spoilers, but I will say it’s hands-down the most engaging mystery I’ve ever read. The big twist was completely unexpected the first time, and makes for a wonderful dual-reading-experience on follow-up reads.

Additionally, the book works well in both print and audio. While the audio, read by Stephen Pacey, is not my favorite ever, it’s still very good, and almost makes my top list of audios.

Now, I’m going to do something a little unusual with this review. My original experience listening to it was a bit unusual, but it’s not an experience I can discuss without spoilers. Because my original “review” (ie two sentences) is sitting on The Zen Leaf basically as a placeholder, I’m going to use that post to hold a spoilerific discussion of Gentlemen and Players, while using this as the primary review. So if you’re interested in spoilers, don’t care about spoilers, or have already read this book, feel free to link out to my 2012 post about Gentlemen and Players!

Posted in 2015, 2016, 2017, 2020, Adult, Prose | Tagged audio, callback, favorite, memorable, multi-read, psychology, reread, RIP-worthy, WTF moments | 9 Comments

Sunday Coffee – Bountiful (2)

Posted on September 20, 2015 by Thistle

Well. I had no idea when I typed up last week’s Bountiful post that this would be another very bountiful week! I admit to being quite grateful for it, as it’s also been a kinda wretched week in other ways, including sickness in the house, prolonged ankle pain, medicinal withdrawal side effects, and feeling rather vague as to direction now that I’m starting over in a lot of ways. But I don’t want to talk about the negatives. I’d rather focus on the small (and large) happinesses that came my way this week.

They began on Monday. My September Ipsy glambag arrived! This month, unlike last month, I loved nearly everything I received. The brow powder did me no good – my eyelashes are so thick and dark that even the darkest powder made no change – but the eyeliner and eye shadow were both amazing. The body lotion was a bit overpowering in coconut scent, and I prefer to keep using my cocoa butter. The moisturizer, on the other hand, was quick-absorbing and smelled amazing, like Fruity Pebbles, ha! Since my cocoa butter smells like Cocoa Pebbles, I’m a fully-Pebbled person right now, heehee. Additionally, my kitty loved the smells, the colors worked really well for my skin tone, and I got this great collage of makeup-me and purring-kitty out of all this:

Later that same evening, our couch finally arrived. Couch saga: We got rid of our old couch before moving back. We bought a lovely chaise-sofa and matching armchair when we arrived. The sofa broke within a week (literally one of the internal beams split in two). We brought it back and exchanged it. A few days later, the new sofa broke in exactly the same way. Obviously, this was a design flaw. We took sofa-and-armchair back to the store for full refund, and we shopping again. We picked out a rocker armchair/recliner and a couch, but both were on back-order and had to be shipped. The rocker arrived at the end of August, but the couch didn’t arrive until this past Monday. We were without living room furniture for over a month! I am quite happy to be with-furniture again, I admit, and the cute throw-blanket we found at the thrift store matches the new couch quite well!

The living room is looking quite complete now. Even more so with the addition of a new TV. This was a surprise for me that Jason brought home a few days ago. Our old TV was very small, and that’s always been okay. We didn’t need a larger one, by any stretch of the imagination. But the boys kept talking about wishing we had one larger for playing Mariocart and Super Smash Bros and all the rest of their Wii games, and we’ve been enjoying a lot of NCIS and Downton Abbey and various movies, so Jason wanted to give us all a nice treat. (So sweet of him!) The little TV moved to my bedroom dresser, and the big TV now frames the corner of the room.

Additionally, he brought home a few little seasonal treats for me on the day when I was feeling awful. An owl-shaped Tuscany candle with “monster cookie” scented wax now sits in my living room. A red-and-gold paisley tablecloth (that the kitten keeps dragging off the table, ha!) brightens the dining room. It’s looking quite cozy and autumn-like here, despite the still-high temps. I love it. 🙂

Posted in Personal | Tagged house, Sunday Coffee | 10 Comments

KonMari, Part V: Sentimental Items

Posted on September 18, 2015 by Thistle

The last culling segment of the KonMari method, in my Great Tidy-My-Life Project, involves sentimental items. This was a pretty quick segment for me, and not nearly as difficult as I expected it to be. Supposedly, this is because by now, my decision-making skills and joy-finding skills are honed. I don’t think that was the case here, though, particularly as I feel like I’m still in the process of learning what makes me happy.

I am extremely attached to memories. I’m not a hoarder or a packrat, and I don’t keep everything that has the slightest sentimental value. However, I’m the sort of person who, for example, took twelve rolls of film to France with me for my six-week study abroad program in 1999, and ended up buying an additional thirteen rolls while there. To give another example, I’ve kept nearly every picture taken with/of ex-partners or ex-friends. I may not want to be with them anymore, but those are still my memories, and I don’t treat that lightly. In other words, I can be a bit insistent about holding onto things, and a little stubborn about letting things go.

At the same time, my grasp on old things isn’t a way to cling to the past. I don’t hold onto pictures of an ex or letters from a childhood friend because I wish I was still in that time period, or with that particular person. Not in the least. I have pictures of people I have no desire to ever see again, and it makes me happy to see those photos. I don’t know if this will make sense to anyone else, but for some reason, holding on to particular things actually helps me to separate myself from my past and put it behind me. And I don’t hold everything forever. When an object loses feeling, then it’s time for me to let it go. Every few years, I dig through my memory-objects and let go of those that no longer feel like part of my life.

Still, there was a lot to go through. I decided to save all the electronic stuff (you know, the 10,000+ photos scanned into my computer…) for another time, especially since I just culled through all my photos a couple years ago when I digitized them all. Not including digital files, keepsakes still took up a great deal of my space:

several large Tupperwares
one giant Tupperware (trunk-sized)
a traveling trunk that I’ve had since college
three large boxes, each one designated for a different child
a closet shelf full of albums, journals, books, yearbooks, etc
a large bag of old artwork

Items in these locations included so much: childhood picture books, funny school reports and projects, the first bound book I put together in fourth grade, my competitive swimming medals and ribbons, old letters, memorabilia from my favorite band, coin collections and foreign money, my childhood My Little Pony collection, the hand-drawn decorations from my wedding reception, etc. It also included some of the most ridiculous keepsakes that I’ve continued to keep purely for their ridiculousness.

Example: I have a white rock that is scribbled all over with pencil. Why did I keep it? Because back in either fourth or sixth grade – I can’t even remember – that pencil was given to me by a boy I liked. That scribbling came from a pencil once owned by a crush. I’m not even sure which crush. All I know is that the marked-up-rock is so ridiculous that it became a part of who I am today, and every time I look at that stupid thing, it makes me giggle. It became more than a lovelorn keepsake, just by the pure measure of me keeping it for a couple decades. On par with this example is the phone number that a friend, Stephen Camlin, gave me at the end of second grade, because his family was moving that summer. I never saw or spoke to Stephen again, but I still have the note for the sheer ridiculousness of having it.

It didn’t take me long to realize something important while going through keepsakes. They were doing me no good stuffed inside a box or trunk. I love these things, and I want to be able to see them far more often than a glance over ever year or two. At the same time, I don’t need to set a penciled-rock on my dresser, or tack a nearly-thirty-year-old note to my wall. You know what I can do, though? Take pictures. I don’t need the physical object of some of these things. Seeing them pop up on my screensaver or desktop background – both set to rotate my photos – will bring me joy every single time.

I used this method a lot: old art, old stuffed animals that the boys loved as toddlers, old baby clothes, all my old medals/awards, old comics cutouts, old pillowcases and elementary school shirts long past ever using again… These things live inside me, yes, and now they will live in my computer, too, popping out to remind me of these things that make me smile despite how old, musty, broken, worn, and useless they’ve become. These new photos will bring me so much joy, and take up no physical space at all, and won’t be hidden away in a box somewhere. It’s wonderful.

(used to be stuffed – empty now)

The one place that did give me pause on this part of the journey was my My Little Pony collection. When we lived in our last house in Texas, there was a shelf lining the top of one wall, with a picket fence decorative edge. (It was there when we moved in, along with a lot of other chintzy things…) I kept my ponies and other keepsakes up there, where I could see them every day. When we moved to Boston, I put the ponies in a box, and there was never any place to put them in the apartment we rented. I brought them back to Texas with me, and they’ve stayed in their box. I figured that I hadn’t missed them, and I should let them go out in the world to make others happy.

I lined them up, took their photo, and put them into the donate pile. I felt wretched doing so, and Jason said, why didn’t we just build our own shelf, like in the old house, and keep the ponies? It was a wonderful idea, and so I pulled the pony-box out of the donate pile. Later, I realized I hadn’t gone through my collection one by one. When I did so, I discovered that only ten of the thirty-or-so ponies actually brought me joy, and I kept those ten, letting the others go. That didn’t make me feel wretched at all. For a moment, though, I’d forgotten that I couldn’t go through things in batches. I had to touch them one by one, and really, that made a world of difference.

All of my keepsakes are important to me, and so my way of getting rid of these was slightly different from in other categories. I could thank my clothes and books, and send them off with love. With my keepsakes, though, I couldn’t just say thank you. I had to kiss every single one of them, and hug them to my chest, and tell them how much I loved them. Maybe that’s silly, but I felt so much better when I did it, as if it was time to truly say goodbye.

Posted in Book Talk, Personal, Wellness | Tagged KonMari | 13 Comments