LIGHTEN YOUR LOAD

Task 4, January 26 to February 2

"A clear conscience is often the sign of a bad memory". Unknown

My New Year's resolution (the one that I am going to endeavor to keep, as opposed to the bullshit ones that I make every year, like: I will not drink beer during the week, or my annual promise to lose twenty pounds--these are promises that we make, I think, for effect only) is to get rid of some of the every growing assemblage of personal flotsam that that I have stashed away over the last twenty years, most of which is shoved into cardboard boxes crammed into the attic, the garage, and much to my wife's consternation, the closet in our bedroom.

I know that I'm not alone in this...

Men stash away stuff like chipmunks, because We HATE TO THROW ANYTHING AWAY. So when a man says: "I don't save shit", he's probably lying.

I don't think of myself as a hoarder. A hoarder is someone who saves weird crap, and saves it compulsively, like the guy with a house full of newspapers, or jars of grease; or the guy who puts strands of thread in envelopes, and files them by color. That's not me. I save things that came into my life and I can't bear to pitch. Stuff like report cards, concert tickets, coins, trading cards, a label from a "Lady Of The Lake" butter container that can be folded in a certain way to make it look like the Lady had big boobs, my mom's high school year book, and a linen napkin that I stole from a Paris cafe.

Also: a bad report card, the summons I got after I was arrested for shoplifting, a break-up letter from my college girlfriend, an angry note from my mother (because I got arrested for shoplifting).

Why do I save any of it? Why am I dragging this stuff along? I hardly look at it all. In some cases I can't remember WHY I saved a certain item.

So I said: this year--no, this month, no--THIS WEEK, I'm going through ALL of it, and toss what is meaningless, give some of it to Goodwill, and repack and categorize the rest.

So I did: I took all of the boxes out of the bedroom closet, went through them. Besides all the stuff I already mentioned, I found some odd crap, like a rusty Swiss Army knife, which I debated whether I should donate, or throw out, a decision my wife made for me when she grabbed it out of my hand and dropped it in the trash can.

And you know what? I don't miss ANY OF IT. As a matter of fact, it made me feel good.

TASK:

Go into your basement, your attic, your garage, pull out the boxes and the old suitcases and laundry bags and pour out your past in front of you. Select five to ten items that MEAN SOMETHING to you, good or bad. And throw the rest of it away.

Write down the experience in your 52 Tasks Journal.