All these little things mean a lot to me
Value doesn’t come from dollar signs
I am lethargic. There’s been a shift this week. The air is finally cooler. I even shivered a little yesterday. I’ve had my first proper wintery meals. Think sausage and mash, cheese toastie with a bowl of soup. The darkness is drawing in by six o’clock now. Every year, it’s hard not to find the loss of daylight oppressive. Underneath long nights and warm evenings you bumble along for hours. Work ends and yet there’s so much of the day left! However will you even spend all that time? You’re practically overwhelmed with all the other activities you can squeeze into the remains of the day. It’s much harder to stay motivated in the evening once the sun goes down. To keep at it, squirrelling away. Resisting the urge to fall into a big, cosy bundle of blankets and just have a nap.
You’ve got to be proactive. You’ve got to push yourself a little. You’re not a hedgehog and you don’t need to hibernate in a comatose state for winter! I’m not saying we need to crack the whip, be too hard on ourselves or ignore the call for rest entirely. But I for sure can already feel myself slipping. I had so much motivation for moving into autumn a month ago. A romanticism for getting stuck into writing and creating my masterpieces. What’s happened? I’m hopeful it’s just a little blip as we cross over into the harsher realities of the cold, darker months. More cheese toasties with soup for lunch should do the trick.
I’m itching to do a big declutter. I’ve decided I hate all my jumpers and that I have nothing to wear. There is no more surface space left in my room and I daren't look at the current state of things under my bed. Thing is, I’m not very good at decluttering. The ironing of buying The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying by Marie Kondo AND Goodbye, Things by Fumio Sasaki only for them to sit on my shelf as decoration, both entirely untouched and left gathering dust isn’t lost on me. It’s not you, it’s me! I’m too sentimental.
I’m getting better with age. Slightly. But all the useless ol’ toot I have from over the years feels impossible to part ways with sometimes. It’s all me! The tangible things of my life story so far. Of things that unlock memories. Of things people I love have given to me. They tell stories of travels and gifts, of achievements and milestones. Who am I without it all?
I’ve been this way since I was small. I went through a horrible phase when I was around 8 or 9 where I feared that one night while we were all sleeping there would be a fire in our house. I was convinced. This went on for months and I was plagued by thoughts of losing the things I owned that meant the most to me. So, one night I decided to put all my most important things into a box. It started off small. Only the very most important things that were dear to me. Which at that age was realistically my Nintendo DS and Nintendogs game. But I do remember there being a lot of photos, old birthday cards and things that could never be replaced. Gradually this box turned into a bigger box. One that had housed my mum’s new set of pans for the kitchen. I vividly remember covering it in stickers. Made the whole concept of a “you’re about to die take all of this with you no matter the circumstance” box a little less menacing for my childhood self.
I don’t really remember when it stopped. I guess after months of there never actually being a house fire and never having a need to grab the box and run I grew out of it. But I do remember that the amount of “vital” stuff continued to grow and grow spilling out over the new bigger box into various bags as well. I would never have been able to carry it all myself regardless, let alone in the midst of an emergency situation.
I’m not a hoarder. I don’t need an intervention and I won’t end up on one of those Channel Four TV shows. But I do find value in things and items. On my holiday the other day, the staff at the hotel pool were tidying up some towels and I watched something fall on the floor. I jumped up to pick it up and give it to them. It was a ring. I’d say in monetary value, it would very much have been at the lower end. But I remember thinking, I have no idea what story this ring has. If someone had gifted it to the woman that lost it, or if it was given to her on a milestone birthday, or perhaps she bought it for herself after a promotion at work. Value isn’t always defined in such simple terms.
Then I just thought about those Mastercard adverts. Priceless.