It's not year of the ox anymore- I'm redubbing it 2009: Year of the Cleanse...or something
If I had to choose a theme for myself this past year, it would be 2009 the year of the cleansing. I don’t think I’m going to run around saying that because it sounds either really dorky or like I’m preaching the apocalypse. But I’ve been doing a lot of self evaluating, organizing, and generally cleaning out my life. Partially, it’s because I’ve had a lot of time on my hands, but the other part is that I have been feeling really cluttered.
It kind of started mentally. And not to sound too self-help, I felt like I was being way too negative or hard on myself. So, in short, I resolved to cut that shit out and instead of trying to force life to happen, which was what I was doing May-December, I chose to let life happen to me. Now here’s where you say something like “What the fuck, Dana?” or in more polite, and appreciated terms “What does that mean?” It means this: instead of applying to jobs and saying “this one here. This is perfect for me and if I don’t get it, my life is over” I stopped putting all of my eggs in one basket and looked at my job at the Y and said, “Hey, it could be worse.” On the subject of boys and boyfriends, I decided that I didn’t need them, if they wanted me they can come to me, but I’m perfectly fine being by myself. And I know that sounds ironic, since I am finding myself currently in a relationship, but knowing that I can survive by myself, and that I don’t need AG to make me happy, but actually want him has, I think, already planted roots for the two of us. I could also be greatly misjudging it and it could all be over tomorrow, but I would pick myself up and go on.
I noticed it when I cleaned out my closet/wardrobe, something I highly recommend everyone to do. This was probably harder than the first thing because I had to sit/stand there and decide what I thought I was going to wear again, what I haven’t worn in over a year, and what was too old, too worn, too blah, for me to ever consider wearing again. I had to be brutal with my clothing. Which was hard because they are my chilluns. I love them more than I love most people, no offense Mom and Dad, and certainly more than my pets, which my Mom has oddly categorized as “Dana’s babies.” I swear sometimes she’s trying to turn me into a crazy cat lady and other times a full blown nerd, and I feel I have disappointed her because I don’t want to stay in and watch Star Trek or read sci-fi books anymore. I like my social life and Vogue magazine subscription, thank you very much.
Anyway, where was I? Oh, so I think the hardest part was separating the emotional attachment to my clothing from what I actually used. I’m pretty sure I held a shirt in my hand and rationalized something like “well, you’ve been so good to me little black tank. I could totally wear you again I just need to go out to clubs more because I can’t wear you out in the daytime” for about 20 minutes. When I realized how long I was holding the shirt was when I realized I needed to put it in a “to go far, far away” bag.
Then I turned to my computer.
My computer and I have a love hate relationship. I hate it, but love it oh so much, and it loves to hate me. If I could assign one emotion that describes my computer as a whole it would be passion. Passion to royally piss me off, oh, let’s say 90% of the time. I decided to clean up my compy mostly because I wanted to put more different shit on it(which is kind of why I cleaned out my closet too). For example, I am now a proud owner of Photoshop. WHICH I DID NOT STEAL. I was given a copy of which I do not know the origin, or I’m pretending to not know the origin, like a lot of things on my computer.
So, I went through pictures, songs, word documents, applications, programs, etc, and got rid of the stuff that I didn’t use or didn’t want to use. For some reason the sound of the recycling bin emptying is the most satisfying while at the same time extremely frightening sound ever for me. I guess because I feel like I’m getting somewhere if I’m not keeping useless shit on here, but at the same time I feel some sort of regret like WHAT IF I JUST MADE THE BIGGEST MISTAKE IN MY LIFE DELETING THAT PAPER I WROTE FRESHMEN YEAR OF COLLEGE????????????????? But it’s not like someone is going to ask me, “Hey, can I see that analyzation of The Sweetest Thing you wrote in Thought and Expression 2? Yeah, you know, the one where you bullshitted stuff about how the main character is a loner and is thus unable to cope with the incidents leading up to the bus accident and thus becomes even more of a recluse when she is wheelchair bound? I want to reference it and then publish it and you’ll make millions of bucks.” RIGHT?? RIGHT?? (also sorry for the book spoiler, but it sucked anyway so don’t read it)
I’m pretty sure I forgot what the point of writing all this was, but I’m going to make the point be that cleaning makes me feel better. I may sound like a super dork by saying that, but I don’t care. It lifts a weight off of my shoulders and almost wants to make me tackle going up to the attic and cleaning out my college shit. Almost. Buuut maybe then I’d find my college ID, and I can work the system some more.
So, happy early memorial day guys. As a present you can find the last two posts I did for the examiner here and here. They are both pretty neato.
It kind of started mentally. And not to sound too self-help, I felt like I was being way too negative or hard on myself. So, in short, I resolved to cut that shit out and instead of trying to force life to happen, which was what I was doing May-December, I chose to let life happen to me. Now here’s where you say something like “What the fuck, Dana?” or in more polite, and appreciated terms “What does that mean?” It means this: instead of applying to jobs and saying “this one here. This is perfect for me and if I don’t get it, my life is over” I stopped putting all of my eggs in one basket and looked at my job at the Y and said, “Hey, it could be worse.” On the subject of boys and boyfriends, I decided that I didn’t need them, if they wanted me they can come to me, but I’m perfectly fine being by myself. And I know that sounds ironic, since I am finding myself currently in a relationship, but knowing that I can survive by myself, and that I don’t need AG to make me happy, but actually want him has, I think, already planted roots for the two of us. I could also be greatly misjudging it and it could all be over tomorrow, but I would pick myself up and go on.
I noticed it when I cleaned out my closet/wardrobe, something I highly recommend everyone to do. This was probably harder than the first thing because I had to sit/stand there and decide what I thought I was going to wear again, what I haven’t worn in over a year, and what was too old, too worn, too blah, for me to ever consider wearing again. I had to be brutal with my clothing. Which was hard because they are my chilluns. I love them more than I love most people, no offense Mom and Dad, and certainly more than my pets, which my Mom has oddly categorized as “Dana’s babies.” I swear sometimes she’s trying to turn me into a crazy cat lady and other times a full blown nerd, and I feel I have disappointed her because I don’t want to stay in and watch Star Trek or read sci-fi books anymore. I like my social life and Vogue magazine subscription, thank you very much.
Anyway, where was I? Oh, so I think the hardest part was separating the emotional attachment to my clothing from what I actually used. I’m pretty sure I held a shirt in my hand and rationalized something like “well, you’ve been so good to me little black tank. I could totally wear you again I just need to go out to clubs more because I can’t wear you out in the daytime” for about 20 minutes. When I realized how long I was holding the shirt was when I realized I needed to put it in a “to go far, far away” bag.
Then I turned to my computer.
My computer and I have a love hate relationship. I hate it, but love it oh so much, and it loves to hate me. If I could assign one emotion that describes my computer as a whole it would be passion. Passion to royally piss me off, oh, let’s say 90% of the time. I decided to clean up my compy mostly because I wanted to put more different shit on it(which is kind of why I cleaned out my closet too). For example, I am now a proud owner of Photoshop. WHICH I DID NOT STEAL. I was given a copy of which I do not know the origin, or I’m pretending to not know the origin, like a lot of things on my computer.
So, I went through pictures, songs, word documents, applications, programs, etc, and got rid of the stuff that I didn’t use or didn’t want to use. For some reason the sound of the recycling bin emptying is the most satisfying while at the same time extremely frightening sound ever for me. I guess because I feel like I’m getting somewhere if I’m not keeping useless shit on here, but at the same time I feel some sort of regret like WHAT IF I JUST MADE THE BIGGEST MISTAKE IN MY LIFE DELETING THAT PAPER I WROTE FRESHMEN YEAR OF COLLEGE????????????????? But it’s not like someone is going to ask me, “Hey, can I see that analyzation of The Sweetest Thing you wrote in Thought and Expression 2? Yeah, you know, the one where you bullshitted stuff about how the main character is a loner and is thus unable to cope with the incidents leading up to the bus accident and thus becomes even more of a recluse when she is wheelchair bound? I want to reference it and then publish it and you’ll make millions of bucks.” RIGHT?? RIGHT?? (also sorry for the book spoiler, but it sucked anyway so don’t read it)
I’m pretty sure I forgot what the point of writing all this was, but I’m going to make the point be that cleaning makes me feel better. I may sound like a super dork by saying that, but I don’t care. It lifts a weight off of my shoulders and almost wants to make me tackle going up to the attic and cleaning out my college shit. Almost. Buuut maybe then I’d find my college ID, and I can work the system some more.
So, happy early memorial day guys. As a present you can find the last two posts I did for the examiner here and here. They are both pretty neato.