Two things I have done recently that made me feel wonderful

jdavidb on 2006-02-06T15:01:49

I've been "working" on my Master's thesis since 2003. It's clearly high time I finished. I've finally started putting in some work on it every day (except Saturday when I had to work: my day off!) and sending the results to my professor.

Amazingly I've found that when I do work on the project, it feels like I have more hours in the day. If my wife and I take an evening to relax, ordinarily I'm feeling guilty about all the things I need to be doing. But if I've already spent an hour working on my thesis, and I know that at least three programs are running and will have some kind of results for me tomorrow, I can relax with ease and a free conscience. The crushing feeling that there are not enough hours in the day is ameliorated.

The other thing I've done was decide to just let go of so many of the things I've felt the need to keep. I am a pack rat. I hoarde things. I keep things I will never need. I keep things I wish I would have time to use but never will. Mostly, I keep a ton of books.

So yesterday Sarah and I went into Joseph's room, where there is a large wall-length bookshelf my father-in-law built, and started pulling things off and throwing them on the floor. This kind of exercise is easy for Sarah, but painful for me!

And so after only a half hour we had about 90 books we're going to sell on half.com or somewhere. The money that was wasted on some of these items can never be reclaimed, but we'll get a little bit, and it will be put to far better use somewhere else.

And I've found that I feel wonderful! I'm looking at cleaning up my share of the mess in our house by getting rid of it, rather than containing it, storing it, and hiding it. I don't need all this crap. We have a second living room that I cannot get into because of all my trash. Clearly I don't need any of that. It's going.

Well, some of it.

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freecycle?

da on 2006-02-06T15:41:04

Yes! I know precisely what you mean about clearning stuff out.

I've gotten rid of some misc and computer stuff via our local freecycle list. Stuff that doesn't really fit in at a thrift store. Easier than the alternatives for getting rid of stuff, and I know it's going to somebody who will use it (and not snap it up and resell it on ebay or something, since that's one of the rules for freecycling).

Re:freecycle?

jdavidb on 2006-02-06T18:34:30

Man, at this point I might be content to just give it to someone to ebay. :)

Re:

Aristotle on 2006-02-07T14:18:21

Hehe. I wrote this in a journal a while ago:

The great thing about throwing superfluous stuff away:

Even if you regret it, you will soon forget.

(Think about it.)