Beyond Babedom

We're (way) over 40. Deal with it.

Karma Career-ia

Super glue. A comb. Matches. A sample pack of Motrin IB. A first aid kit with needle and thread. Four miscellaneous gift cards with varying amounts left. Two more Motrin packs. A teeny weeny  screwdriver. A flashlight keychain. A really good pen. A lighter and matches. A flash drive/power link. A pocketbook hanger. Contact lens case.  A crumpled dollar bill. And a covered elastic.

All this. . . and that’s just the zipper part of my pocketbook.

Why do I feel compelled to keep so much junk so close at hand?

I know I’m not alone. Your purse may not be cluttered, but I’ll bet something of yours is: your house, your closet, your car, your yard. Because all of us (okay; most of us) just can’t bear to get rid of stuff. But it’s not so much the stuff as it is the memories. And even the bad ones.

Now, I’m not saying that carrying Motrin makes me remember my last headache fondly, so what am I saying? It’s almost like we’re afraid to get rid of stuff because maybe it will no longer exist if we can’t hold it.

Last week I went through a box in my attic where I was storing papers from an old job that had deteriorated over the eight years I spent there; I had commission reports, performance reviews. Even old emails, arguing back and forth with one of my managers. As I read over some of this stuff, I started to get angry. How could she put that in my review? Why was he being such a jerk when my email request was eminently logical? The more I read the more pissed off I got. Oh, and this wasn’t the first time I’d looked at these papers. Periodically, I’ll look at old work stuff and relive those moments.

Okay, so maybe I’m anal, but we all keep negative memories, tangible or just emotional. We go back to them and remind ourselves how angry we were or  disappointed or upset. We hold onto these bad memories like they’re worth something. Maybe we want to make sure we avoid the same situations. Maybe we want to learn from our mistakes. Or maybe we just want to feel that anger again.

So, I threw it all away;  every negative comment, every angry retort, every piece of paper. Eight years of my life, swept clean of negative karma.

Now, all I have to do is go through the other 25.

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This entry was posted on Friday, April 2nd, 2010 at 4:11 PM and is filed under Career, My Pet Peeves. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

  1. David Alexander says:

    Good move, dumping the box with eight years of useless, unhappy memories. That’s something more of us should do. But that would seriously cripple the “Public Storage” industry. George Carlin used to do a great routine on “stuff” and why we all have it. Chances are he took stuff with him on his trip to Heaven.

    Your purse is another matter. They’re not pockets, they are portals!!! And as an science fiction fan can tell you, once a being goes into the portal, there’s no turning back!

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