Day 111 Discard and Delete

March 30, 2015

(This is part of a 365 project during my 70th year where I write and illustrate a blog on each day's gift.)

Broken pin sculpture proves that even broken things have something to offer.

I have given myself permission to begin a more serious culling of what I call stuff. I have thrown away hundreds of slides, photos, negatives and prints. In the past, I have held on to broken gadgets, with good intentions of either fixing them or repurposing them. Today I made a trip to the dump, after forcing myself to face the truth—I had no need for some things and neither did anyone else. There is a wonderful sense of release when I finally dispose of things. 

Some things, however, need to live with me just a little longer. For example, I have a pin sculpture toy from years ago. With your hand, face or an object, you push the pins outward to create a 3-D pin sculpture. At the last minute, I pulled it out of the dump pile, brought it home and proceeded to photograph it. Half of it is broken with bent pins that will not move properly but I used the other half to create a peace symbol of two fingers—proof that even when something is broken, it has something to offer. 

There remains more to physically throw out and useless, outdated digital files to delete, but sometimes I cling to things, even when it makes no sense. I refuse to delete the many dead people who live in my contacts. Relatives and friends remain in my Outlook contacts with name, address and phone numbers properly filed. If I write to those addresses, the envelopes will boomerang back. If I call, no one I know will answer. Yet, in my mind, they remain in the digital version of indelible ink. So does a phone message from several years ago. In a folder, labeled Dad on my hard drive is a WAV file:  “Happy Birthday, Bonnie. I guess you’ve already gone so I’ll talk with you later. I hope you have a real good day. Talk to you. Bye. Love you.”

My gift today is partial permission.

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  > Day 112  Devil's Walkingstick

You can read my other posts on this project here:
http://bjschupp.blogspot.com/2014/12/365-gifts.html