Finished, But Not Quite

I think I have officially finished the big life-changing clear out that began back in May. Well, at least I have checked off all the main boxes on my original list. But I do feel like I'm not quite done.

Marie Kondo's book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying, has certainly been just that (which is much fodder for another post). And I am now curious to see at what point my level of possessions "clicks", as she discusses. This is essentially an equilibrium point of the number of belongings with which you feel at ease. I assume now after the initial cull is done, I can begin the process of tweaking here and there to find out where this set point lies. 

And that is good, because there are three specific reasons I don't feel completely finished. 

The first is that when it comes to sentimental items, particularly the letters and photos, I still think I kept too many. I whittled the letters/cards down from over six shoe boxes to three and I categorized and shifted through countless photos, ending up with four shoe boxes of discards and rejects. I am planning to make new photo albums with the remaining pictures -- a much more slimmed-down and edited version of my life story to remember now. 

With clothes and other less personal items, I was ready to send discarded things out to the rubbish bins or charity shop straight away. Not so with the photos and personal correspondence. I need more time to read through the letters and start to make albums of the photos, in order to decide where I am comfortable. And being an incredibly sentimental people-person, despite my brash blog post Burn 'Em?, I am no where near ready to set flames to my discarded letters. This might take me a while. 

The second reason is I haven't even really begun to read the pile of papers of my early writing. Or the diaries. I have no idea how much of that I will end up saving and in what form. But that is a project that will not take a few hours or even a weekend. And I am looking forward to the process -- and you should as well, considering the positive reaction I received from my brother and sister-in-law at my debut reading of "Thunder Under the Sun," a novel I started that sounds incredibly similarly to a V.C. Andrews book (remember Flowers in the Attic?). I promised them I would serialize it on the blog. I am currently working up the nerve. 

There's yet another reason: the electronic cull awaits. In this day and age I cannot just clear out the physical stuff and ignore the mess that awaits on all my electronic devices. Now that would be sloppy. (Kondo doesn't discuss this in the book, so I guess I'm on my own here, although a friend forwarded me her list, so I will try to use that as a guide.)

But the good news is I believe I've succeeded in the main task set out in Kondo's book: to clear out all my possessions in less than six months. The point of this is to feel a monumental shift in attitude to belongings. And the peripheral benefits of this are already clear. Not only is there the weird, added bonus of finding it incredibly easy to be neat -- something that has eluded me throughout my life -- but I am also gaining a better sense of who I am and what's important to me in life. 

(I know, no one believes I'm not a neat person. It's one of my two best kept secrets. The other one is that I am a bad speller. Just ask my Mom, she will confirm.)

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Burn 'Em?

I envy the youth of today.

Because they will never be confronted with six shoe boxes of childhood letters. I kid you not: in the boxes that my Mom shipped over from my childhood home, there was the most enormous collection of letters, cards and postcards (but mostly letters). From friends who moved away, friends who went to camp and even a German pen-pal named Karoline, who I never met. Karoline, are you out there somewhere?

And so the youth of today's boring correspondence about the guys that they like and the music they are listening to, will either just get deleted as cyber storage space becomes sparse or will be stored forever to trawl through.

Perhaps that might strike fear in some of their minds. But they shouldn't worry, as no one will want to read the texts and messages they have sent back and forth. This is the thing about letters from kids and teenagers: they are boring as hell. I have tried to go back and read the letters but I just can't, as there are too many and it is all too tedious. I have even found two letters where my friends listed out their high school course schedules for the semester. Riveting stuff.

Here's an excerpt from a randomly selected letter from a guy friend who lived in upstate New York:

Did you listen to the Spin Doctors yet? If not, that's O.K. I don't like them much anymore. Now I like the Soup Dragons.

The best part is the ending (they pretty much all end this way):

Now I'm all out of things to say so until the next letter.

I can't wait!

But here's the question: what do I do with them all? If you were one of my childhood friends who sent me these letters, and I have to admit, many of you still know me (at least via Facebook), what would you want me to do with them? What have you done with my letters? Are you curious to read them -- should I bundle them up and mail them to you?

I am thinking: burn, baby, burn.

In fact, it's made me think that I'd rather spend the time communicating with these people now, getting in touch again. Or if we're still in touch, I should be spending more time talking to you now in this moment, instead of reading your teenage musings. As Marie Kondo so wisely says in her book (my of-the-moment self-help bible): "The purpose of a letter is fulfilled the moment it is received. By now, the person who wrote it has long forgotten what he or she wrote and even the letter's very existence."

I've decided to go through the cards (and post cards) more thoroughly as those are more direct forms of communications, and usually are limited to one or two per year. Plus, you can't write 6 loose leaf pages of text on a birthday card (hopefully).

Lastly, if you have any of my letters, I am more than happy for you to burn them. I've got 13 childhood diaries as evidence of my underdeveloped view of the world. And that's mortifying enough.

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