10:44 pm - Weds 8.25.2010
I May NEED That...!

Prepping for "the big move" - scheduled for a week from Sunday - this evening I started getting rid of some things (Throwing some things out - a phone with a built-in answering machine that doesn't work anymore, mass quantities of old headshots, a formerly white sheet, and a number of wadded up Borders polo shirts - and putting a chair, some books, a couple of coats, some pants, and a stovepipe hat I bought for an audition, mistakenly thinking it was a top hat, in "the giveaway area" in the lobby).

As Ringo Starr once said, "It don't come easy".

I'm a "hoarder".

I wouldn't say I'm pathological - I'm in no danger of being crushed by stacks of old newspapers or magazines, I do actually throw my garbage out (eventually), and I don't think the show "Hoarders" will be beating a path to my door anytime soon - but there's definitely an impulse to hang onto things, a feeling that "I may need that"...whatever "that" is.

Some weeks back, I read a "Confessions Of A Hoarder"-type article online.

As an example of his hoarding impulses, the author wrote that he has six coffee-cups filled with pens.

I have nine.

In addition to that irrational, anxious, "I might need that...!" feeling, there's something else going on having to do with "sense of identity", particularly with books (And to a lesser extent, with cds and dvds).

I'm tempted to say "My books tell you who I am".

But they really don't...because I'm too embarrassed about the way I live to ever invite people over; nobody knows what I read, or what I'm going to read next, unless I tell them.

My books tell me who I am (And in some cases, who I want to be).

It doesn't take a great intuitive leap to figure out why the former foster child has a hoarding/collecting impulse; I think it's more interesting to ponder how that impulse, while never really going away, has "quieted down" a great deal over the years.

Speaking to the book thing, I think awareness was part of it - Once I realized that my library basically existed to remind me of how smart and interesting I am, it started to seem a little silly; not so much so that I gave all my books away, but enough that you'd never know, by the number of books I currently own, that I spent most of my adult life working in bookstores.

(1:34 am)

How did it get so late all of a sudden...?

Feels like there's a lot to do, and I barely scratched the surface this evening - I got rid of a little bit of stuff, figured out the best day for moving, and called Mark H., my former upstairs neighbor, about arranging to pick up the stuff he has stored with me, stuff I'm no longer going to be able to accommodate.

Realizing earlier today that I kind of forgot about the whole "thirty day notice" part of my lease made me feel like, "What other important details am I going to overlook in this process?".

But one way or the other, what needs to get done will get done (And happily, the newest apartment management team here seems pretty cool - Instead of being dicks about the "thirty days notice" thing, they just told me to write up a notice ASAP, backdated to the first of the month, and they'll pretend they've had it all the while and it "got lost in the shuffle").

The fear is - well, I don't know what the fear is; I guess that's it's not gonna happen somehow - but I'm trying to project ahead to this time next month, when I'm in my new digs, feeling silly that I made myself crazy over moving six blocks away.

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