I Will Want What I Have, Even If That Is Nothing At All

I’m going through my closet and weeding out clothes that I do not wear and ones that I really ought to stop wearing.  I peeled a frayed pair of underpants right off of my body and threw them in the kitchen trash.  Then, I stared at them in triumph.  I do not have to keep wearing these just because I technically still can.

I was planning to pare down my belongings in anticipation of a move to a different apartment.  Then, I took a brutally realistic look at my finances and knew that the smartest thing to do for now is just to re-up on my current lease.  So, I looked around me and sighed.  Stuck again.

So, I told myself that if this is my home, then I am going to make it matter. I am still going to purge the trash, deep clean it, and since I couldn’t afford the move, I will try to afford a few small upgrades.  Those are TBA.  Junk goes first.  Curtains might be nice.

I am going to want what I have.  And when I have nothing at all, I will be grateful for the simplicity that it brings.  Right now, I am just sort of staying in my space.  I am occupying a rented unit.  The goal is to make this a home.

I live here.  I LIVE here.  I’m going to relax a little.  I’m going to say this is okay.  I am going to accept it and try so very hard not to be resentful.  Sometimes this space feels like an impossible emptiness.  Sometimes I do too.  But it doesn’t have to be that way.

Somebody said once, “You are enough.”  I keep telling myself to believe it.  

 

 

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Start with the Question, the Complaint, the Dissatisfied Ramble

I want to throw out everything I own.  I want to build a ramshackle cabin in the woods and live in it.  I want to quit every job and not take another and just write.  Do you know how hard it is to write when all you do is work at jobs that somehow leave you poorer than you started?

I am tired.  I am frustrated.  I can’t tell you how deep it goes without unleashing a bitter and fruitless rant.  My best energies fall to waste; my best talents are obscured.  My money that I work and work for pays the rent of a shit apartment and little else.  It is difficult to make time for loved ones.  The more hours that I clock in, the less that I have to show for the time spent.

What am I doing?  How do I make it better?  When I die, what will have mattered?  What can I do that will not have been in vain?

I want to tell you that it is fine to feel this way, but I am not sure that it is fine.  I am not sure that I should be ignoring the huge, visceral instinct to stop wasting my time.   It seems like we are encouraged to think that any and all work is of value just because we put our energy into it.  I have my doubts.

What if I opted out of capitalism?  What if I opted out of rules?

Perhaps this sounds like useless dreaming–a ramble about a magical world that is not real.  What I know is this:  my body, my spirit and my mind have needs.  I cannot care for myself without giving them time and attention, but to have food and shelter I am expected to spend every waking moment “earning” them.  I would rather learn to make them myself.  I would rather ask for nothing.

I want this life on my own terms.  I want and want and want.  I have no answers.