What's that John Lennon line about life?...

I was about to settle in for the night and begin to reread The Black Swan, when all of a sudden I thought it would be both relevant and fruitful to write about the weekend’s main accomplishment: reorganizing the boxes of my possessions currently stashed in the walk-in closet of my dad’s basement. Yes, this is another episode in the chronicle of being a boomerang child (with a hopefully more lighthearted feel).

Now, the rereading was itself a distraction from reading the new book, Age of Insight, so it only seems fair to be distracted from the distraction. I’ll write about whichever book wins the battle for my erratic attention span later.

While charging in to that basement closet, swiping away cobwebs and pulling out obstacles like an old mini-vacuum cleaner and suitcases, I began to reacquaint myself with my own stuff. Stuff I haven’t been using...so I had every intention of putting at least half in a Good-Will pile.

I did not end up with a Good-Will pile.

This is in part due to genetics; both my mother and my father passed along the predilection for holding on to everything. But it was also due to the fact that this great stuff, my prized possessions, was and is meant for my future/hypothetical/imaginary home. The home that is mine. And perhaps shared with a special someone. But primarily mine.

• I have throw pillows with pretty prints, still wrapped, from Target
• Three boxes of kitchen implements, including a great 50s-60s era dish set from my grandparents’ house (which my sister Rachel couldn’t wait to part with...crazy)
• Three more boxes of Christmas ornaments, baskets, vases, and such collected from both grandparents and mom’s own stash, just waiting to be my heirlooms someday
• Posters that will probably prove to be too “college” once I unroll them
• And most importantly, my desk.

Add my books and everything upstairs, and I have all the fixings for a home crammed into someone else’s house. Yet I haven’t allowed myself to feel at home here. I’m waiting for, pining for that future/hypothetical/imaginary home.

In the past, I would focus on how I’m never going to get that home. How my career and education choices have soundly beaten that goal into dust. Not so, this evening.

I’ve always been waiting, with the expectation that things will finally start to “happen” once a certain mark is passed. First it was graduating high school, then finding employment during college and moving off campus, then working full-time, then moving to New York...you get the picture. While I was living those days and weeks and months, I did not let myself feel like I was living. I was always working toward something else, and saving things for the next future magical period of time when I would start to feel like I joined the living. The real people. Not the students, not the interns, and certainly not the unemployed.

That's totally photoshopped...

The boxes in the closet are a symptom of this waiting: a toaster that isn’t toasting, a flute that isn’t being played, a desk I’m not typing these rambling words on. We all do this, to an extent. Heck, storage companies in Manhattan base their business models on our inability to part with our stuff from/for another life.

While I have the inkling to live more minimally, whether by squirreling my stuff away or donating it, I can choose to see my boxes in the closet as symptoms of hope, as well. Like the picture of a car my mother carried with her until the day she bought the car.

And while I carry the picture of the future/hypothetical/imaginary home, I’ll try to let myself feel like I’m living because of my stuff, not in spite of it.