Movement

Especially since Steinvic & Son have been in Arizona, I've been keeping myself busy by making room.

Purging the walk in closet of stuff I really don't wear. Shredding the boxes of paper hiding in the office. Vaccuming the corners and relentlessly tossing things away.

Today, I started in the guest room closet.

When you have to move in a hurry, you pack everything. Where I used to live...well...I left in a big hurry. I had to.

For a while, all of those boxes sat in a climate controlled storage space. I paid extra for the climate control because I had musical instruments and art supplies that I didn't want to suffer at the expense of the extreme Ohio temperatures.

When I moved them all here, to this house, I remember my Mom eyeing the boxes and saying, "Where should we start?" and I replied, "You should go home." My Mom knows me well. She and my Step Dad each gave me a giant hug and kiss and Mom said, "Call me."

I unpacked all the essentials in lightening speed, getting everything in place by about 2:00 in the morning. Everything. This is how I work, whether I like it or not. As Monk would say, "It's a blessing. And a curse."

But the boxes of this and that? Those I stacked into the guest room closet and office closet. I've let them sit there for more than five years, and I've never needed or been curious about a thing in them.

Now it's time to put that space to much better use and because I didn't know exactly what was in those boxes, I couldn't follow my instinct to just throw them away.

So tonight, I revisited my past. This is something that I occasionally, involuntarily do. If I'm feeling low. If I have had too much to drink. If I have a nightmare. It is not a place I enjoy. And tonight, I had to go there on purpose.

But I thought of what Steinvic recently said to me, dismissing something troubling by saying, "Let's put that behind us." I have heard this phrase all my life, but I'd never really digested it before. Knowing that I'd be going through these tough spaces in the coming weeks, I have kept that statement close, thinking carefully about what it meant.

That the present is a choice. That it's as wide open as the future. That the past is only as powerful as we allow it to be. And yes, it really is that simple.

Armed with a box of Hefty bags, I attacked the closet. In just a few hours, I'd thrown away about a quarter of my old life.

It feels good.

And I can't wait for the garbage truck to arrive.