This is the first journal entry in five (!) days, after a flurry of office-moving activity, and the first thing I’ve written at the new rolltop desk, a fine piece of furniture purchased for $6 at an online estate sale auction, 90 minutes after it reached its final (for now) resting place. It was the biggest bargain of my life for about six days, and then I purchased the five-piece bookcase and entertainment center ensemble for $1 at another online sale. Nobody wants to buy big hairy furniture anymore, I guess.
There are stories and stories to be told about the struggle to move all this furniture from here to there, but those can wait until my various aching muscles heel and we can laugh about it a little.
It has been a long time, if ever, since I had this much space to plant my arms and write. I don’t want to clutter up this wonderful writing surface, but I’m sure I will, eventually. For now, I’m really enjoying all the elbow room.
I still have boxes and boxes of stuff that somehow piled up in the other room and need to find a new place, either in this room, in the basement, in the recycling bin, or in the Goodwill box. Some decisions are easy — I will never need that oil change receipt from 2014 again — but some are a bit more challenging.
For example, remember the guitars I hung on the walls? They were supposed to remind me every day that I love to play the guitar and write songs. Instead they became sort of artwork on the wall, and the callouses on my fingers are long gone. I hauled the guitar cases out of the basement, and the guitars are back in their old position, just over my shoulder and ready for me to pull one out and play. We’ll see how that works.
This is a brand new opportunity to find “a place for everything and everything in its place” again. I want the boxes empty as soon as possible, and that means oodles and oodles of decisions and Marie Kondo-style moments, as I handle all my stuff and remember what gives me joy and what has become expendable.
My problem, and my blessing, is that I’m surround by so much that gives me joy. And I’m not just talking about the stuff.