Inventory Rhymes with Gory
I was taught the inventory process first by my mother. We would file, organize, color-code and sort the things of life with the nimbleness that, on her, always looked like intense professionalism. Still does. On me, it ended up taking a spin down OCD Road heading to the land of Found Buried in a Pile of Stuff, but that will, over time as you read the additions to this blog, become obvious. She taught me the basics of how to create a home filing system, how to organize a drawer, and we even went so far as to sort my dolls' clothes by season and fold them into neat piles. When I played teacher, my students' desks (shoeboxes) were lined up into neat rows, and I preferred symmetry (my coloring books were lined up by size and genre) in my decor.
The inventory process expanded when I learned new skills and obtained new neural tracks. I gathered experiences, people, places, things... in my mind, I put them where they fit. If they didn't fit anywhere, I was baffled. I never understood what to do with people. I never really felt comfy in any of the places I was, went to. But things... ah things. THINGS could be sorted and piled. Things could be keys to memories that no one could see but me. Things were what they were, regardless of how badly you had treated them the night before, unless you broke them.
My point? If people confound you, and places don't fix you, things are where your frenzied spinning self comes to rest. I live in a country where there are a lot of things, a lot of places to buy more things, sell things, trade things. Objects are detachable, sortable, file-able. If you are not careful, they accumulate with astounding speed. There are entire sections in bookstores on how to organize and make the best of your stuff. There are books on the worth of collectibles, how to make (something) out of a used (something), or who to donate that (something) to so they can use it, and you will then have more room for more (somethings).
The beginning of my inventory process started when I realized that the stuff of life was a nice, sturdy wall, a pretty but alarmingly sharp-edged container that I had formed around me and my children. If we had toys, if we read the right books, if we had the right cooking supplies, if we made sure not to waste items that could be used again, we could somehow circumvent the obvious and live in entertained bliss amongst our objects d'art. I also realized a side effect of compulsive spending and emotional shopping (two hobbies I, er, enjoyed in my 20's and am paying for in my 30's) was staring around at lots of random crap. The side effect of the randomness was a busy buzzing in ones head that distracted from the problems of the day. For example, if I never, ever got my closet overflow under control, I wouldn't notice that I didn't fit into half of my clothes, and I wouldn't take the time to examine why. If we had lots of books and movies and games, lots of electronic devices, lots of noise around us, we wouldn't have time to notice that we were still healing from wounds that were oozing, untended, with slapped-on sloppy bandages made in haste while watching the next season of some show, bought of course online, on sale.
(More tomorrow as I teach you how to build walls with stuff. It's a DIY Defense Mechanism Starter Course.)
No comments:
Post a Comment