On a recent trip to Key West, I visited a museum of a treasure hunter whose catchphrase was, “Today’s the day!” And for me, today’s the day. Today, the moving truck arrives and the ex is finally vacating the property with whatever possessions she chooses to take with her. It’s an event five years in the making.
This week has been a process of sorting out what stays, what goes, and what gets disposed. The best way that I was able to describe my handling of the situation is “turbulence”. It’s like there’s all this dirt lying all over the place. Obviously that’s not a good thing, but I was used to it. I didn’t mess with it, I just walked around it. But this week, all that dirt is being moved and stirred up. It’s irritating and stressful in its own way. But I know, soon it will all settle down. There will be less of it and I can safely dispose of it and finally be done with it. I’ll have no more dirt in my house. The dust settlement begins today.
It’s going to take a while. There’s a lot of stuff that is not going and needs disposal. I’ll need to hire a shredding service for probably a couple hundred pounds of files. I’ll have to slowly dispose of non-sensitive files for weeks and weeks in the garbage. I’ll have so many goodwill/salvation army drops, I’ll probably be on a first-name basis when I’m done.
But, this is also a reboot. I get to start over again. And in some ways, it’s better than the alternatives. I’m in the same place I was 10 years ago. While most people start over in a brand new place, I have the advantage of saying, “I’m not doing that again.” I know what’s good and what’s bad, whereas in a new house, you don’t know what’s bad yet.
I just got a call that the movers are going to take a lot of things that were going to be left behind, so I will come home from work tonight to a much emptier house and then my work begins in earnest. Up to this point, I’ve been busying myself with outside changes and improvements. Now I have an entire interior to work on. And my list is looooong.
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