Oak End Table

Day 165: Oak End Table

Day 165. I won't say it's exactly significant. But it does mean I have exactly 200 days to go. 

200 days. 

200 days of identifying stuff that has no utility and brings no joy. (Do I have 200 such items left?) 200 days of trying to come up with content that, if not interesting, is at least not embarrassing. 200 days of writing a few paragraphs, sometimes late at night when I'd rather be sleeping. Or in the middle of the day while I'm walking on a dock in Saugatuck, writing with my thumbs (as I am now). Or sitting at my desk instead of taking a lunch break. 200 days of taking photos, and composing Craig's List ads (only about 50% successful so far), or running to the post office or the Salvation Army. 200 days of composing little quips for Facebook and hoping someone will comment. 

And why? Because at this point, it's starting to feel like into Thin Air. Like, why would a guy with kids and money and a home keep on climbing that mountain, when it was ugly and strewn with litter and dead bodies and he could hardly breath? When he might have died and then where would his kids be? Was it just because he wanted to say he'd done it? Was it because, having invested so much in beginning the endeavor - the training, the gear, arranging it all, writing about it for publication no less - would it have been just too humiliating to call it quits? Who would he be, if having invested all that, he simply packed it in and went home?

I'm not self-satisfied enough to imagine that this endeavor is by any means on a par with climbing Mount Everest. And I do remember what I hoped to gain from it - a daily writer's prompt, a forum for thinking through letting my daughter go off to college with grace, an opportunity to clean house responsibly and thoughtfully, and perhaps, at the end, content for a thought-provoking memoir about stuff, society and letting go. And I even realize that deep learning involves effort. Even hardship. 

But today, sitting here on the dock with the sun shining and the wind at my back, with no photos of extraneous stuff in my photo archive, plumbing my memory for a thing or two that we don't need, I'm starting to feel the same way about the stuff project as I felt about Jon Krakauer's trip up Mount Everest. 

Like, seriously?

So. This end table. Water damage on the top. Not rickety. It made the cut when we moved to Ann Arbor from San Francisco. But it's in the basement now, getting more water damage and doing nobody any good. I don't have a photo, because I'm 150 miles away. And the Salvation Army errand will have to wait 'til Tuesday. 

165 down. 200 to go.