by Jay Hiller, March 18, 2023
Photo by Julia Joppien on Unsplash
I’m working steadily but slowly to reduce the amount of stuff in my home and life. Having seen two family members in the last 3 years spend enormous amounts of time and energy dealing with the possessions of family members who have died, I don’t want to leave a similar mess to my kids. All of this decluttering has made me think about the reasons I have all this stuff to begin with. Part of it is that I get enthusiastic about hobbies and start collecting the equipment to practice them. And some of it is sentimental. Can I really get rid of the book my dad gave me when I was 18? Or the needlepoint my aunt stitched? My grandmother’s crochet work? My wedding dress? That’s sentimentality, but there’s a part that’s emotional in a different way. It’s easy to make yourself believe that if you only have fill-in-the-blank it will help you compensate for some deficit in yourself. The quote below expresses this well:
“There is a kind of poverty where you have an excess of things, and all your energy is directed toward getting and keeping them.”
Yoko Ono
Today’s workout:
I felt good about my workout today, which was a full body weight workout. I taught a yoga class and a meditation class and walked over 16,000 steps for a total of 125,000+ steps this week. I feel that I’m getting stronger. It’s helping me physically and emotionally that I had a week off work and got enough sleep this week.
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