random thoughts – Day 1,853 – (Sunday) – shedding a life

It was a rough night for sleeping last night, but it fits with my decades-long  pattern of sleep disturbances in April and October. Last night/this morning, I woke up at 2:30 to use the bathroom. I was back in bed in mere minutes, but not sleeping. There was tossing, turning, and flopping around.

Monkey chatter brain kicked into high gear and I was done for. My eyes were closed, but my brain was going a hundred miles a second with a list of things I need to do to get the house ready to go on the market. Clearing out the spare room that failed in its potential as a guest room and never moved past being a storage room is a pretty big (stressful) ordeal. As I tried to recapture the now elusive sleep, images of boxes and their contents kept intruding.

At 4:44, I gave up trying to get back sleep. After dressing, I tackled the master closet and yanked some dresses, shirts, and tops to donate. There was the usual argument that starts with, “this jacket hasn’t been worn in ages.” “But what if I get a new job with a different dress code?” I managed to part with a bag of things that don’t fit. They survived several years of previous efforts with “maybe I’ll lose weight and they’ll fit again.” The clock has run out, and I finally accepted I am not now, and likely never again will be a size extra-small and the once-favorite items of a different time, metabolism, and activity level are going bye-bye.

After dance class, grocery shopping, and a lunch of a massive salad, I went upstairs to the spare room. After hip checking open the door that has been closed for so long it sticks, I headed to a sealed box. Once opened, I saw that it contains files. Lots of files. In addition to a couple magazines and other writing samples, there were budgets and grant applications and marketing materials from a foreign film festival I helped organize in Tennessee. The sponsoring arts organization no longer exists. The festivals were in 2005 and 2006. It's probably safe to send the files to the recycle bin. Of course, this means I will most certainly find myself on a committee organizing a foreign film festival and will need the name of the film distribution company in New York City as soon as the recycle truck rolls away Monday morning and I’ll be depressed over the tossed files I forgot I had until this afternoon.

After clearing some of the files, the smaller box of “gifts bought in advance” was tackled. It had lots of smaller gifty items initially intended to be included with larger gifts – small frames, journals, cosmetic bags, holiday shot glasses, etc. Somehow, they never quite worked as part of a gift, most likely because I forgot about them.

A once imagined social life.

There were packages of invitations bought in the last century during a time when I was optimistic about leading a life of cocktail and dinner parties. There were invitations for New Year’s, Christmas, cocktails, cookout, and pizza parties that never transpired. They moved with me from Fitchburg to Worcester to Ashland, to Marlboro and back to Worcester, then to Tennessee, and up to Lowell. Residences in some of these locations were chosen based on the ability to have sit-down dinners and parties. 

For chunks of time at several of the locations, I was romantically entangled with guys who didn’t want to host gatherings fancier than a keg party, if at all. Then evites came along, and it turns out email invitations work pretty well and don’t require postage stamps. The invitations to a life once imagined are now in the donation box and will be picked up on Tuesday along with a box of housewares, one of books, one of shoes, and a bag of clothes. Hopefully, the momentum will continue tomorrow night and more items will be gathered for the same pickup. The sticking point might be that right before I learned I would be losing my job, I flattened and discarded several boxes that were perfect for donations or moving. This is not even a surprise. Timing is rarely my forte.

As part of the downsizing for the future move, I need to find somewhere to sell off my collection of vintage clothing, hats, and purses. Once upon a time in Tennessee, I often wore vintage. Unfortunately, a lot of the stuff doesn’t fit anymore and the vibe of my life back in Massachusetts doesn’t really inspire a vintage outfit. The collection is a sad reminder of when my life involved galas held on sweeping horse farms, in southern mansions, and in riverfront parks. There were weddings in botanical gardens, stone courtyards, and a rockabilly themed one in a historic Las Vegas hotel. Those were some good years.