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I'm not very good at letting go.
I have a lot of books. Many of them I've never read, and will likely never read. I have three copies of August Wilson's Fences, a play I've been intending to read ever since I saw Wilson's The Piano Lesson on Broadway. When I was 13. In 1990. Yes, three nearly identical copies.
It's on my list to finally read this summer. No, really. Consider it done.
I also own a lot of CDs. When we lived in the San Francisco Bay Area, I loved nothing more than going to the cavernous record store Amoeba and buying a dozen used CDs for around $20. Some were real finds - beloved (but obscure) artists, whose records I still treasure.
However, have you ever heard of the metal band Squatweiler? Yeah, neither has Wikipedia. I've had that CD for a decade.
I sampled the first track yesterday. It's most definitely not my cup of tea. I've moved that album twice, including across the country from Menlo Park, California to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.
And so this past weekend, I began the laborious process of cleaning the cluttered office to make space for the baby's room.
Some decisions were easy. Yes, I can get rid of those albums and books I don't recognize, and eliminate duplicates. But those are a small fraction of my book and CD collections.
For now, I'm fooling myself by thinking the rest can go in bankers boxes in our storage spaces. Because I apparently truly believe that someday I will remove R.J.B. Bosworth's 692-page history book Mussolini's Italy from a dusty box in the attic and sit down for a scholarly look at my homeland in the mid-20th century.
All change requires letting go. Most of the time that process is painful, but worth it. This one's a no-brainer.
No one accomplishes everything they hoped to when they were young. It's a sad fact of our abbreviated lives. But if the impending addition to our family forces me to consolidate and prioritize, that's probably not such a bad thing ~ and likely long overdue.
So thanks, little Bun.
