Doing the Grunt Work

I’m afraid this second-to-last post in 2018 is dismally pedestrian. But necessary.

I spent the day today doing the grunt work I spoke of yesterday, only today was the piece by piece examination, recycling, and, when necessary, shredding. I’m astonished by the volume of paper I’ve purged.

I only have about three short piles left to examine in this fashion, and tomorrow is my deadline.

I’ll confess: the stuff of Karl’s, I’ve saved (euphemistically, at least) for tomorrow. And I’m not going to beat myself up over any of it. If I need to save half a dozen file folders for a couple more years – or thirty – or 100 – so be it.

Purging My Old Hats

Instead, I’ve been engrossed in reliving my work lives at the two institutions prior to devoting the vast majority of my time to my shamanic practice.

It’s amazing to me how much I forget from year to year. It makes me wonder if that’s unique to me or if most people allow vast chunks of detail to float down the river of memory, too. Sometimes I wonder if I deliberately let go of a lot of memories by recording my life contemporaneously in journals.

I don’t know if that’s true – but it does provide me with a modicum of comfort.

So many details seemed so important at the time, and the urgency of a lot of it came back to me as I re-read emails I’d saved and reports I’d written. And now…wow. So many issues we dealt with have become exponentially worse.

I think the biggest surprise, however, is how freely we used our social security numbers on so many documents only 15 years ago. Wow.

My Shredder – My Best Friend

As a result, I’ve been shredding my behind off. Indeed, I literally overheated our shredder twice today. We started smelling burning plastic and then a long band of red light (that I’d never seen before) appeared beside the small green ‘on’ light, and the shredder stopped working completely.

We even used our social security numbers as ID numbers for our health insurance plans! I don’t think we had any inkling of the dangers we’d routinely face around identity theft.

Speaking of identity theft…that was another memory I’d put into the back of my mind and recollected in all its complicated detail today. I’ll definitely have to write about that experience one of these days.

The bottom line, though, which I believe the comments many of you so generously shared on Facebook confirmed, is that this purging is necessary. It’s perfect. It’s an extraordinarily empowering way to begin not only a new year but also a new chapter.

(T-1062)