Stop reading for a minute and take a close look around the room you are in. Study closely the bookshelves, table tops, window sills and the walls and go over what you see piece by piece. Whether you are 20, 40 or 60 you have over your lifetime collected items that are important to almost no one but yourself, individual mementos of certain people, places or events that you consider relevant and evoke warm memories however unless you are a person of some notoriety when you die no one will be the least interested in saving most of your ‘junk’.
Over the decades, first by necessity (moving from a home in the city to a cabin in the woods) and as time moved on by choice I have gradually been paring down my ‘junk’ until now I believe it would fit in maybe three or four average sized boxes. I believe I was motivated to this ‘pairing down’ because of a fire that happened a couple years after I moved into the bush………..
**** ***** *** ***** ****
Isn’t it sad that this posting about what we personally consider important has been stopped dead for weeks and its now languishing on my desktop. Then again it is not alone in its static state, there are more than 27 postings in one state or another waiting to be finished but I just do not feel the spark to finish them.
The reason I believe for their ‘cryonic’ like slumber is depression. I have searched WordPress for postings on depression and it seems that very few are willing to write about their experience. Over the years if you have been following my writings you know that the three dominant things that enhanced my living alone in the wilderness, armature radio, fishing and writing for this blog, are now gone with my lack of postings to attesting to the latter.
I have found myself staying up till 2am or later and not rising until 11:30 added to that I binge TV shows from 5 pm till I go to bed just to keep my mind from thinking of anything important and during the day when I normally would be writing I am playing computer games, I believe I am definitely in some kind of depressive stage.
Now back home in Alaska when I felt a whiff of something like this coming on I always had one or two close men who I could reach out to and where I could go and just let it all out without fear of those I spoke with getting worried or judging. These friends were sounding boards just like a psychologist they would let me talk and only rarely responded. Here I have only spoken out maybe once or twice and even then because I am speaking to my family who love me it is one of the rare times I censor what I say.
So here I sit
pondering not what to accomplish
but what souvenirs I have accumulated
over the 70 years of my life.
pondering not what to accomplish
but what souvenirs I have accumulated
over the 70 years of my life.
