One of the tasks I’ve been trying to get to for a while now (like since back in the New Year’s Resolutions time frame :p) is cleaning my study. I don’t usually work in that room during the coldest part of the winter, preferring the kitchen where it’s warm. This year I never went back, though, and stuff keeps accumulating. I try to reduce the clutter, throw out the junk, put things in their places, even periodically tackling the necessary rearrangement, but mostly I turn my head the other way when I walk past that door.
Today I went in to put something away in the desk drawer.
I looked at the things on the desk. I looked at the things on the bulletin board above the desk. I looked at the books in the bookshelf.
It was like I was looking at a place belonging to a stranger. I remember putting those things up — the photo of Francoise Hardy, the glow stick from the Shakira concert my daughter took me to, the turkey feather I found in the back yard, the certificate from my first NaNoWriMo completion. I remember what they used to mean to me. They were important touchstones. They reminded me who I was, what I had accomplished, where I was going. But standing there looking at them, I felt like I might as well have been looking at a museum exhibit about some writer named Bonnie who happened to look like me.
I suppose that means this troubled summer has been accompanied by internal changes as well, and that it’s time to clear the decks and start fresh. It will be interesting to see where it goes.
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