The Long Game

February 28, 2023 by Cassandra Johnson

Full stop. Forced to slow down. I was a little sick for a few days this month. The beauty is having no choice but to slow down. The other beauty is feeling gratitude for how you normally feel and reveling in the return to normalcy, feeling more gracious, more ready to accomplish your work naturally or just relax.

Today is a leftover of one of those days in which I can tell I have fully rebounded from choosing to eat what disagreed with me. Lost energy recovered and a lot less of an uphill climb today, the seeming setback just added a little more to the time I needed to prepare myself for work again and to finally be able to move on to my new organizational goals.

The next steps mean dismantling the façade of everything I own seemingly put away in the right spaces. I still need to address what may be stored away and what I need to dispense of for much lighter travels.

Perhaps saying goodbye to a lot of closet space, shelves, boxes and drawers will give me clarity. I have needed a change for a while.  Occupationally, I have made progress, but perhaps I am a little more stagnant in my environment. Going away from time to time does not seem to serve my complete curiosity.

Looking over my place, I am sure there is so much I thought I needed that no longer has the same purpose. There is also probably a lot of not knowing what I have. There could be an emotional analogy in how I have put items away, meaning to go back to them long before now, meaning to finish projects or think through ideas.

Keeping what I think I need will probably change and undoubtedly, I will have a hard time parting with some of the stuff. As I have moved to different apartments in the area before, I am also familiar with the surprise of simply holding on to other things like random papers and writing. I am now going through items and sense this is a good exercise for shifting my mindset and clearing space for another perspective. It would be nice to feel freer and lighter and I am curious how much of what I acquire is really me at all.

Some sentimentality and obsolete resources are no longer needed. I am okay with moving on, although there will be a bittersweet crossroads. I know that feeling too (and could be an explanation for my simultaneous stalling). I notice my past self even keeping some reminders of struggle, thinking this helpful in seeing how far I have come. I wonder was it really. Depending on the motivation and the mood, it seemed to be. I wonder how much I have changed without my stuff. I wonder how much of my stuff is really me.

buy me a hot chocolate