Hoarding and letting go
I have suffered for a long time from a serious disease and it is now horrifically acute as well as chronic. This is serious. It's affecting my whole life and it has to stop..This is a post that's hard to write since I'm not sure I even want to admit to myself how acute this problem is..
Basically, I can't stop collecting things. Particularly information. I have spent days of my life rearranging my filming systems for all the notes I have written, all the leaflets and torn out articles and pictures and pamplets that all represent something to me. I have gone out and bought more and more furniture to house these filing systems...it has cost me a lot of money. I have gone through many phases of fanatical interest in varying topics. Back in the 90's, personal development, facilitating personal development, spirituality; food, always food, and issues around food; from 2002 onwards, environment and anything to do with climate change; I must have attended literally hundreds and hundreds of meetings, talks, speeches, symposiums, all of them generating their own large pile of bumph with its scribbles and ideas and names and lightbulbs signs (my doodle-speak for an idea I want to follow up) in the margins. In the early-mid 2000's, lever-arch files full of notes on filmmaking techniques and camera instructions. Those cameras have long gone out of date, yet I still can't bear to let go of them. They represent the knowledge I consumed voraciously - but, as the next topic of interest shoved the last out of the way, these files grow dusty, neglected and unread on my specially-made shelves. And in the last couple of years, hording anything to do with Transition Towns, anything to do with gardening and flowers...and so on. The other day I threw away ( or shall I say, put on a charity pile in the corner) a set of rather pleasingly colourful elastic bands that I had had SINCE I WAS 10 years old!!!!!!! AND NEVER USED! And this situation is now replicated on my adorable new Macbook Pro; rather too many folders divided into subject matter and now spilling over into 3 or 4 external hard drives.
Sad case, I think. In my defence, everytime I re-organised everything, I did throw stuff away; but I also kept a lot - some of the notes and ideas would make their way onto my To Do list (book of To Do lists actually, which itself keeps getting reorganised, - it's been in the form of flip charts all over the walls, excel spreadsheets, fancy expensive notebooks, filofaxes, 10 different iphone or computer app, but that's another story). Of course, all this aquired knowledge - that % which has stayed inside me - is part of what makes me who I am - but I also know how much I had to let go of, involuntarily because time marches on and you can only do so much. Throwing stuff away is tremendously relief-inducing BUT it also makes me frustrated and sad as if all that embodied energy was wasted somehow.
It essentially boils down to much deeper questions about who I feel I am and which direction I want to take my life in. My huge enthusiasm and curiosity in the world need to be reigned in, harnessed and used to develop something amazing. But every time I feel that I know what, for now, that might be, the next day something else has come along to make me wobble. I know I should be more selective. But I must have a deep-seated fear of closing doors, shutting options off perhaps.
At least I am working in an industry which allows me to regularly learn about new topics, in great depth, to meet people, to travel. One month I might be talking to a scientist about how the sewers of California are run (actually not something that was on my List of Things to Learn about, but hey there you go!) or how the International Space Station evolved; the next, talking to an artist about modern art in a globalised world, the next about biochar or hydroponics... and so on. Can't complain... it's just that I feel the need to dive in now, to have my own topic on which to become an expert.
I could actually have a separate blog couldn't I, for people who have too many things they want to do. That's the kind of thing a life coach might do. I'm still looking for answers. I know what the self help books say and the life coaches, but what I mean is I'm still looking for answers within myself.
For now I'll just tell you the story of the Confused Donkey, which my pal RL told me.
Once upon a time there was a donkey, and he was surrounded by several piles of hay. He looked around at them and they were all delicious-looking, so he couldn't decide which to eat! He stood there, looking and looking, more and more frantic, trying to make up his mind...
In the end, he starved to death!
Poor donkey.

