Spring Cleaning & Sentimentality

After a Friday night of beautiful weather, clothes-shopping, and an impromptu dinner at Three Brothers with Andrew (who thoroughly enjoyed his pizza), Chris was inspired to clean out his dresser and closet. While he did that, I worked my way through Andrew's dresser to take out outfits that were too small, replace them with larger and spring ones, and set aside others to donate. I also continued working through the boxes of pictures, papers, and books which I received from my mother recently, which had since been stored in closets around her house. It was really good to work on cleaning up somewhat together, while Andrew listened to music and roamed between the family room and the back of the house to check in with us to see what we were doing.

It's so hard for me to get rid of things from the past. I'm sentimental with my writing from when I was younger, both creative writing and papers. I'm also very sentimental when it comes to pictures, even though many were poorly taken as a six year old who didn't really know how to use a camera well.

I think I'm attached to keeping so many of my writings, because it reminds me of a time when I spent the time dreaming, thinking, and writing. I made it more of a priority. I also used to have a lot of it typed up, which I lost a few years ago when my hard drive crashed and I hadn't backed most of it up (or what I did have backed up, no longer loaded via the CD). I still dream in the back of my mind of becoming a writer, whether it's fiction or some sort of nonfiction memoir, but I'm not very proactive about it.

Additionally, I think I'm holding onto a lot of pictures because so many of them show times I don't remember well such as how my brother, sister, and cousins looked as we grew up together.

For the moment, I think my goal is to organize the pictures at least, by purchasing a nice album and taking only "the best" of everything prior to high school. With the writing, I think my goal is to go through it, especially the poetry, and get rid of most of it, especially that which is of no quality whatsoever. I think some of the creative writing from when I was younger I'll hold onto for a while longer unless entirely pointless or I'd forgotten about completely. I might be able to convince myself I don't really need some of those things in time.