so, tomorrow the crew arrives, and basically takes away everything i own.

i spent most of yesterday going through the house making sure i didnt miss anything that couldnt be replaced, like photo albums... and in the course of that, i found myself cherry-picking things, saying, well, i cant get rid of THAT! or THAT! nope, not THIS either!

and so the collection of stuff "saved" began to grow, from one packing box, to two, to almost three. this morning, i realized what i was doing, and emptied out those boxes, keeping only maybe three things with genuine sentimental value.

now that it gets closer to actually happening, im getting more and more apprehensive about it. its a hard thing, to divest yourself of everything youve accumulated over the course of 20 years... far harder than i would have expected it to be.

i made a commitment to starting over this year, to changing the direction of my life, to not let who i WAS forever dictate who i could be... and its one of those things that is easy to say, and even easy to do on a superficial level... to do something like, say, quit smoking or get out more, then stand up and declare "yep, im DIFFERENT now, for sure!"... but really those are pretty minor. you can easily just... stop doing those things, and be right back where you were, in safe and familiar and comfortable territory.

but THIS... this is another thing entirely. theres no going back from getting rid of virtually everything you own. i mean, at the end of monday, i will actually have less "stuff" than i had when i moved into my first apartment at 19! this is the point where the commitment gets REAL... and im a little bit scared.

not so much of losing my stuff. i can get more stuff. the world is full of stuff waiting to be acquired. no, i think its mostly what it symbolizes, and what it portends for the rest of the commitment to change. im going to have to give up more than old "things"... ive got to do the same kind of house cleaning internally that i am doing externally... and how much harder is it going to be, to get rid of cherished and familiar patterns of thought and behavior than it is to get rid of an old couch?

i think the thing that scares me most is... not knowing how. i want to be happy, you know? i want to feel full inside. and what ive been doing the last 20 years isnt getting it done. but im just as clueless now as i was 20 years ago about how to get there from here.

however, i am a big believer in the "sink or swim" school of change, so even though a large part of me wants to call it off tomorrow, im not going to do it. im going to come home monday to a fresh, empty home, ready to be refurbished and filled up again... and hope that i can produce, in sympathetic fashion, the same kind of change internally.

everything... must... go.