deep cleaning my house has been interesting because it's kinda a dialogue with myself and my past. It's been 4 years since I packed everything into a car to move from home and now everything feels different
It's a mix of stuff that makes sense to get rid of - well-worn college t-shirts, Flannel I got that's warm but too stiff so I never wore it, a bunch of lightbulbs I got for cheap (but led's last so long now)
But there's a lot of stuff that's harder to get rid of. "Does it spark joy" is an interesting question to ask yourself. Like, why do I have Codenames if I honestly don't enjoy it? (it's Fine, it's not good or bad; it's Fine). And the answer is because it's popular and I feel like I need to have a library of games that a lot of people enjoy b/c I have other board games. And it was cheap. But paring down my board game library to only games I wanna play makes me happier having them.
I was going through Electronics yesterday and it's very easy to slip into "functionality" once you get into things like that - like of course I need to keep some cables, but do I really need a VGA cable? None of my current monitors use VGA. I'm not at a point in my life where I have weird hand me down monitors that use it. And if I do get to that point again, I can get a new VGA cable.
I'm usually pretty worried about being wasteful and throwing stuff away but I'm giving myself a pass now with the idea that hopefully I'm honing in on what I Actually Want and Need in life so I stop buying things that I dont need "just in case"
Especially weird things! Like I don't need some old floppy disks. At one point in my life I thought it was cool. Was it me? or was I just emulating the retro YouTubers I watched? I don't know. Part of me wants to keep them because "what if I ever want to use them or put writing on them or whatever" but do I really -want- to put anything on a floppy disk? not really. I'd do it to say that I did and hope it gets me Cool Internet or Friend points. I'd rather just. do something else. something that's more me. And if that changes in the future I can get floppy disks again and go from there.
And all this does feel wasteful but it does feel nice having less boxes around. slowly paring down to just what actually makes me happy. And if I need something that I got rid of, I can get it again and cherish it this time.
All this has really made me unsure of Who I Am though, realizing a lot of what I have is just for other's sake or some ideas I had of myself that never quite felt right. Like things I'm "supposed" to have or enjoy or like. and I'm not really sure what's left when you strip a lot of that back.