Dusting Off

There's a problem that comes along with re-inventing yourself into the person you want to be.

How do you know which parts of the old you to leave behind, and which parts to carry forward?

I pondered that very question as I lay in bed last night.
If I were going to be successful at my re-invention, then I couldn't go back to doing the same things the same way I had always done them before. I would have to make a lot of changes, some small, some not so small, in order to reach the point that I wanted to be.

I thought of it as packing up to move across the country. As you stand in the middle of your living room, surrounded by a lifetime worth of crap that you've managed to collect, which things do you choose to take with you?

At first glance my life appeared to be nothing more than a giant pile of crap. On any given day I would tell you that I was literally disgusted with every aspect of my life. What I slowly started to realize was that not everything was horrible, but somehow the good stuff had managed to get tarnished with the crap stuff that had slowly taken over.

If I were going to go about the process of deciding what to take with me, and what to leave behind, then I would have to make sure to give everything a thorough cleaning first just to make sure that I wasn't accidentally throwing out something good.

The voice of my mother infiltrated my thoughts:

"What if we painted it and glued it back together?"

"Why would I want to do that mother? I can get a new one for $19.99."

"But we can fix this up and make it work."

"But by the time I buy the paint and the glue and then sweat over it for hours it will still be the same old piece of crap with a fresh coat of paint, and I'll have spent $23.50."

It was the mock argument with my mother that left me to fall asleep with a smile on my face. As I continue the process of re-invention, I will take the parts of me that make me the person I am, the best parts of me, and leave behind the rest.

Nothing to paint or glue.
Nothing to fix.
Just plenty of dusting off to do.