Item: Stuff

I'm ending the year the same way I started it, thinking about all of the stuff that I call mine, how it adds to my life and how it subtracts from it.  I've been saving for awhile this piece from May by Rick Wartzman, which is also a kind of weighing of the ideal of paring down and the ideal of keeping and treasuring what has been part of one's life.  He comes out on the sentimental side, I think:

Weighing you down? Boy, I find there's no better pick-me-up than slipping off by myself, opening one of those cardboard crates and rummaging around in it. To me, every knickknack and piece of paper--whether a decades-old postcard from a friend or a weathered reporter's notebook--is a talisman, sacred and filled with the power of memories.

I could come out there, too.  How could I have spent a year talking about my things if they didn't have layers of meaning and association?  And yet I could also continue to believe there is a degree of freedom in simplifying, because I've felt it myself; I've experienced it.  I can say basically the same thing I did on January 1, that I live with these conflicting desires, but it's not simply repetition.  I've been, by doing this blog, a lot of other places not on the straight line between these 2 points.

It's been especially valuable for me to follow so closely how I write:  what makes for my best writing, what makes for my worst.  This blog, although not exactly a tangible thing, has become a fixture in how I live.  I've become so accustomed to having it that I haven't seriously thought about it coming to an end, not really.  So much so that I haven't even figured out how, if, when, or in what form to do anything like it next year.  But, anything new will show up here, so you can check in if you're interested.  Thanks for reading.