Recycling

Ever since I was told my book was "almost there," I haven't touched it. It is in a pile right next to my desk taunting me, but nothing about it beckons me. Quite the opposite. Instead I am knee deep into a complete purging of all the extra stuff in my house. No drawer is safe. No closet. No nook. No cranny. Today I will go drop off two large shelves worth of old paint at the hazardous waste site, wash those shelves like there's no tomorrow, and be blissed out as I put freshly reorganized totes in their place.

All the while I sort, toss, haul, and wipe, I am listening to soothing music and lost in my thoughts. It's a good lost. It's actually, the best kind of lost. It's a mindlessness kind of thinking, much more like meditation than anything else. And as I go through old things, I see that I am truly done with them, and that is healing. Done with taxes that go back to 1999. Done with different phases and eras of my life I don't care ever to go back to. Done with projects I thought I'd finish but have freed myself from ever needing to. Done with some of the boxes that hold hard times, too: all the paperwork that went with my father's death. All the different information on therapies we tried or considered trying. All the ventures I toyed with that didn't pan out.

Done.

It's time to make my house, and especially the basement, no longer a graveyard. No longer a place where things that are over, are stored forever. Keepsakes need to move. Junk needs to move. The energy needs to move.

What I am finding as more goes out the door, is that new reservoirs of my own energy and creativity are freed up, too. I am no longer considering the purging to be writing avoidance, but pre-writing. A necessary step towards being in a place where I can allow more in, because I released a bunch. It's really recycling, if you will, a recycling of energy.