There’s something satisfying about cleaning, even if it is only digitally.
This morning I sorted out my Gmail account. Later today, I want to do the same to my other web-based email accounts. I’ve taken to clearing out my private forum mail messages regularly.
Thursday, I cleaned out all the old accounts from my IM lists.
I have months of logs I need to evaluate and archive or delete.
I’m sure this is the end parts of the annual review of my life, tossing out the old and making space for the new. But it feels like there is more to it than just that.
Someone mentioned equilibrium to me. Yes, I suppose that is part of it. The general frustrations I’ve felt for the last few years have bubbled into a non-balanced state. That’s a dreadfully mixed metaphor, but anyone will be able to understand it.
I have a hard time reaching a balanced state. It’s easier–there’s the problem–to just drop things than back off. The balancing act, when my core is unbalanced, is nearly impossible.
During this long re-evaluation of everything in my life, I’ve come to feel as though there are no balance point at all. None. It’s uneasy.
I suppose it all started when my cockatoo died. I’d expected him to be with us for another ten years; given that he was a wild-caught bird, it’s very hard to tell how old he really was. That event knocked the wind from me. I blundered on–alternately grieving, denying my grief, berating myself for grief over a bird–for the better part of a year. In the end, I settled into numbness, then realized that eighteen months had passed. A shocker. Where does the time go?
And so, in this morning’s cleaning of emails and contacts, I went through another small cycle of grief. People I spoke to, but will speak to no longer. Emails that were valuable, but are now discarded and deleted. Decisions I’ve made this week–feed this blog, not the forum. Stay here, not there. Yes, the virtual is supposed to be a diversion, but I am getting tired of diversions.
I find I enjoy building the spaces for people to use more than using them. Not a surprise. Other preferences emerge–again, no surprises.
The fall has gone too quickly. I stumbled along the way. I’ve begun to remember where I was going–again! will this process of forgetting and remembering never end!–and so I commit to do that. As soon as I commit, I know that my resolve will weaken, and the futility angers me.
I know that is part of the trouble with my relationships–my frustration with my own weaknesses. In the past, I was able to overlook the weaknesses. Then I lost my patience. Now, I have become brittle and segmented, uneven, no longer capable of keeping a single perspective, remaining nonattached, flexing when flexing is needed.
I have grown to despise myself. And yet, in that loathing, I sense a positive–if I can hold the course.
If. It’s the biggest word in my vocabulary right now.
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