New Year, New Push
Tuesday, January 9th, 2007The last week of the old year was a great step forward for me. I took Tuesday through Friday off from work (with Monday already off) and made good use of the time. Dividing my days 70/30 between getting rid of the junk i had squirreled away and relaxing and enjoying my time off, I set out to start the new year as I should have started the old; sans all the crap I have accumulated since the end of high school.
So much useless garbage, all gone. All the left-over spare parts from the 240sx, many old monitors and old computer parts, old textbooks and papers from my former SRJC tenure, a lot of random anime related junk that I only had because it was anime related, a bunch of magazines like: Black Belt, Electronic Gaming Monthly and Import Tuner(never going to get rid of Sport Compact Car, Technobabble is unquestionably the greatest column in the history of print).
Some of it I was hanging on to because I thought I might need it someday. Yea, right. Some of it I thought I could sell. Once I found the time to; and found the right buyer; and they were willing(and able) to pay the right price; and hell freezes over. Well not the last one but you get the point. But lastly I found I was hanging on to so much stuff mostly because I have strayed so far from my ideals of yesteryears that I seemed to subconsciously hope that even though my actions don’t then my possessions will reflect those ideals.
Of course that is ridiculous but oftentimes that is how hope is. I only had two choices if I was to give myself something more than hope. As I sifted through 5 years of dreams and wishes, and hope I realized that I could return to those ideals and no longer need these things to serve as reminders of who I once was. It is either that or let them die and find new ideals with which to guide my life. In my mind the latter is quite depressing but I have changed so much since those days. Can I really go back and live that way?
What it all comes down to is I have to try. The relics of my nostalgia aren’t giving me the strength that my ideals should. They have been serving as my crutch for too long. This isn’t a matter of sink or swim. There are two ways not to sink here. I can remember how I once swam: powerfully, inspired, free; or I can learn a new way. Given that I am an entirely different animal than I once was both are equally daunting and there is still the chance that in ditching the waterwings I may sink.
I only hope that someday I will look back on this time as a turning point in my life. Where I finally stepped forward and found the “me” I needed to be. Including parts of my past I new I never wanted to forget, the parts of my present that are the joys that keep me going and the parts of my future that I’ve dreamed of and hoped for all along.