Next car will be a transformer

My car is growing ever closer to the point where I will have to trade it in. I would have made the deal under cash for clunkers except that my car does not qualify as a clunker nor would I ever deem myself capable of driving a clunker. But in addition to having a broken passenger side window that does not fully close and allows the rain in I now have a rather odd ventilation system. You know how your fan in your car has five levels? Well, levels one and two no longer work for me. The other three are perfectly fine, though, so I either get a ton or cool air or none at all. This requires much more planning than I would like in my driving regimen.

It is strange the attachment that we get to inanimate objects. I mean, my car is simply a combination of metal and plastic and the odd candy bar wrapper but it has been a part of my life for eight years now. I have listened to every CD I own in that car (though I now seem to have a speaker failing thus adding to the reason for an upgrade). While it is simply a thing it is rather emblematic of a time in my life. That makes letting go all the much harder.

I wonder why that is the case. I still have bags of clothes to give away to charity and the toughest part about letting go is this sense of giving up a part of myself. Even though in this case I am talking about sweaters that are over ten years old and that I wouldn’t ever wear again I still have a hard time putting them in the bin. For a time they were who I was, I wore them at times that I would like to remember and a few that I would like to forget. Now I don’t need to have clothes to recollect but there is a little bit of a draw there. We all want to hold on to portions of our past and often it is the physical items that are the toughest to let go of and move on to the next chapter. Mentally I know it is something that I just have to do but I always feel like putting it off for just one more day.

I do think that we should remember and record our past but I think you can do it without being tied to clutter. I am really happy that I have been keeping a journal for over 11 years now and can look back and see what I was thinking and how I was feeling over that time frame. I recommend it to everyone to at least try. Just sit down for fifteen minutes a night and write about whatever you feel like. You don’t have to publish it, no one else ever has to read it, just write what is on your mind. Often you will be surprised at how it turns out.

Me, I just want to get some sleep. Have another long day of Powerpoint wrangling ahead of me tomorrow. One day I will make a living as a writer and not have to focus on bullet points but until then I have to pay the bills.