I think it’s been about 10 years since I started this blog. Most of its visitors seem to be people who search the web for a particular topic, and come to one of my pages. People who had followed it in the past may have concluded that my clutter problem was something I solved, and I lived happily ever after. Not quite. You can fix a car that’s been heavily damaged, but that doesn’t mean you never have to give it regular maintenance again. Likewise, an uncluttered home will inevitably need to be looked at again when things reach a point of getting out of control again.
I’ve reached a point where things have gotten pretty out of control again. But it was from that first major clean-up I took up and used this blog to document, that I learned so much about myself, my old habits, and decluttering. And that’s been helping me take on this new round. So lately I’ve been taking before & after photos along the way. You may see many new “Why the hell do I still have this?!?” photos in the upcoming weeks.
In the meantime, I have an anecdote I’d like to post here. It doesn’t have to do with clutter, but it does have to do with the 30th anniversary of an event that recently passed. Here it is.
March 16, 1989 was one of those eventful days I have a good memory of. I remember four events in particular:
1) It happened to me my friend Danny’s birthday. Though by that time he was in a different school, so I didn’t see him on this day.
2) My homeroom teacher, who was a complete cunt, was actually out that day. That was rare. My wife had ended up having the same teacher some years after I had, and would probably use the same words to describe her.
3) I got into a fight after gym class. I started it. Though I think it would be more accurate to say I finished it. The boy who truly started it had started it with me 2 years before that, when he started to make relentlessly picking on me as a hobby. Did I win the fight? Rumor had it that I did. But in reality the fight was broken up by a teacher before it was finished. But the boy never bothered me again after that day.
4) I saw Metallica that night. It was my first time seeing them, and to this date the only time. Queensryche opened. What a show. I visualized a lot of vengeance and death to that boy from memory #3 as “Creeping Death” played. I managed to talk my mother into letting me stay home from school the next day on account of having been up late. Of course another part of that was not wanting to immediately go back to school the next day after memory #3. My brother, who was at the same concert, ended up going to school that day, much to his dismay.
Those were the big events on that day 30 years ago. I can still remember many little details about #3 and #4 too, for better or worse. It’s one of the curses of having a good long-term memory.
