NEW YEARS ADVERTISING

A person can always tell when the New Year approaches – the “let’s start over” advertisements start.  There are diet commercials, and exercise commercials, the find-a-mate commercials and the quit smoking commercials.  All these companies are ready to help you with your resolutions ... for a price, of course.  For the most part I ignore them. 

My dissatisfaction with my weight is a year round thing, after all.  I don’t need to be told to eat better or less, and I don’t believe that paying for their program or food is going to help me unless I commit to it and if commitment is what is needed, I already own that ... just like I own these 25 extra pounds I lug around.

Likewise the exercise equipment they want to sell me.  I already possess a significant piece of this.  It’s a great place to hang a coat on and the grandkids like to perform death-defying tricks on it, but mostly it just takes up space in my TV room.  It does work when I use it; that’s the trick, for sure.  I do not need another one to double my guilt at money not well spent.

Thanks eHarmony, but one is enough.

Smoking is easy.  If you never begin a bad habit you never have to give it up.

But, there’s another resolution suggestion that’s been popping up on Face book this past week or so.  I don’t know how Mark Zuckerberg can see into my house but it’s obvious he can.  He thinks I should de-clutter the place and promises that I will feel less stressed and be more productive if 75% of the garbage I’m holding onto is gone.  There have been several pop up ads to spur me on.  I say if he feels so strongly about it, he should come help me.  Or, he can mind his own business.

I’ve been hoarding stuff for so long I just lack the oomph to tackle such a daunting job.

So, I have been ignoring the de-cluttering push as well.  The first few days after the company went home I focussed my attention to dealing with the leftovers and putting random toys away.  Next I began the push to rid the house of extra Turtles chocolates and opened bottles of wine.  The guest bedding was washed and the surplus blankets put away.  I think I’ve found a place for all the new Christmas gifts.

Yesterday as I reluctantly took down the tinsel and garland, the wreaths and the ornaments, the lights and my collection of angels I began to see a pattern.  I was clearing space and putting things away.  Occasionally I was actually throwing something out.  Oh sure, it was only the leftover cranberries, a broken decoration and a handful of cards from years ago, but still.  I would never have to deal with them again.  That kind of felt good.

This morning dawned as unremarkably as any other: my to-do list quite unimpressive.  I’m the chairperson of a board and I needed to find the minutes from our last meeting to prepare for the next one.  I was sure I had put them in a file folder in my office while getting ready for Christmas.  It’s now 11:30 and it appears I placed them in my “safe place” vault and will only find them in 2023 when I’m looking for something else.

BUT, and I say this with astonishment at how I have put this fruitless search to good use, in turning up the many other papers I’ve kept that I have no need for I actually reached for a garbage bag instead of putting them back where I found them.  I have .5% less junk spilling all over my desk than I did three hours ago.  Look at it this on the surface it is such a tiny difference, but on the inside I feel like a trajectory has been altered.

We’re not talking doing a 180, or even a 90 degree turn, but I remember a teacher pointing out to us how a one degree angle could be the difference between the Apollo spacecraft hitting the Moon, or missing it and drifting on forever.  This course correction is a subtle thing, but I think that’s exactly the reason it might just work.  The difference isn’t in the change of the angle, it’s in the distance it will carry me.  Who knows where I’ll be a year from now!

I sure hope good old Mark Z can spot the difference in my office clutter by spring so he gets bored and leaves me alone.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a few Turtles left to take care of.