Fourth Friday in April

 I'm on a mission to get rid of loads of our things. Our house isn't small but it's full to bursting, and I'm depressed that the great work of my adult life has been tidying the house. Not only that, but it's never even tidy. I go on and on about excess, and it's not easy, I'm as much wrapped up in it as anyone. But I don't want to be, and I hope I can raise the girls to be a little less affected by it than I have been. 

I have begun by going through the house, drawer by drawer, and cupboard by cupboard. It is slow work and will take me some weeks, but I think it is the only way to be thorough. Today I have been through the dressing table in my bedroom, the top drawer of which was taken over by perfumes and makeup that I don't use, and the bottom drawer which had become a graveyard of photos, notes and drawings by the girls. I went through all of this piece by piece, and threw a lot out. I kept some, a little stack. It made me feel miserable going through it, and I wonder why I'm keeping any, if there will ever be a time where looking through it feels good. Nostalgia is poisonous. Maybe made worse when you feel worried about the future as well. Both the past and the future are foreign countries. 

I'll get back to it in a moment, the bedroom is in a state of chaos and I'd like to at least empty my desk before I have to get on with the daily jobs. It's been an interesting process so far, and I think will continue to be interesting and painful. The last few years I have been on a kind of autopilot. Going through my things is giving a stark impression of the kind of person I must consider myself to be, and it's someone unfamiliar. We let our Things define us so much, but what Things could define who we really are?

Edit: It's been a bit of an eye opener going through all of my personal things, because it seems a lot of it either harks from when I was a promising genius artist in my teens or early twenties, or if it has been acquired since then, it only has been based on the same premise. I did not turn out to be a promising genius artist, nor do I ever expect to spontaneously become one, or intend to put in the hours to try and work towards that. Therefore all of this stuff not only didn't serve its intended purpose at the time, but now exists only as the long dead bones of my ambition. Which isn't very nice to adorn my home with.