On Moving On
Have you ever run out of space on your hard drive? I mean really run out of space, when the operating system is throwing warnings up on the screen. “What can I possibly delete?” you think to yourself. There are a few first places to start that are relatively stress-free. You take a cursory look in your Trash, making sure that there’s not something in there that you would in retrospect like to keep. Then, you hesitantly tell your computer to empty the trash. You get a little space back. Maybe you delete some funny videos people forwarded you in emails. Crisis averted… For now.
Eventually, you get the warning again. But it gets to a point that there’s nothing in your trash and you’re still out of space. This is where I am at with my computer, and it is a perfect metaphor for where I am at in my life. Overfull. My computer is sluggish from being full of data, my drawers are bulging with clothes I’m never going to wear again, and I think I have my pre-algebra book from 7th grade on a bookshelf somewhere. I’ve simply taken on too many things in my life, and they’ve made me physically, mentally, and emotionally sluggish.
I’m lucky to be young. I’ve got the better part of my life ahead of me. So far I’ve lived in eight cities in three states and one “metropolitain county” in two countries (and visited more), and there’s little doubt that more adventure is in store for me. The adventure that is currently on the horizon for me is moving my life to the opposite side of the country, continuing my career at Apple in the San Francisco Bay Area. Everything from my past will be far east from me, or farther west when you take a spherical world into account.
The move that is part of my next adventure affords me the opportunity to declutter my life. At the hard drive level, I’ve been able to delete gigabytes of files and emails corresponding to organizations, activities, and people who will be part of my collective past; my memories, but not my future. In the real world, I’ve disinvolved my time and attention from the physical analogues of these things. Over the next few days, I’ll continue to separate my wheat from my chaff: what clothing won’t I wear again, what books I’ll give away, what furniture, knick-knacks, and people from my childhood, adolescence, and early twenties it is time to leave behind as I begin to furnish my independent adult life and mind.
This is going to be an interesting and challanging change for me. Rarely in life do we get a chance for a clean break; to put our life through the wringer. I’m going to try to do better with creating and cataloguing my future memories in ways that still let me have a balanced and invigorating clutter-free life. It’s time to buy a digital camera, to get some healthier food for the pantries, to put my computer to sleep, and to go for a walk in the warm May air.
I like to write, but I don’t like to feel like I have to write at a certain time or in a certain way. I’ve abandoned my previous weblog into the ether of cyberspace (Google ranking be damned!), and I am thinking that my writing in this space will be a bit different from now on. Most of you who come here wanting to know what’s new with me should, like me, instead strive to use the most rewarding possible medium of communication. If we can get together for a hot (or frosty cold) beverage, let’s do that instead. If you have my phone number, call me. Don’t worry, I’ll still post some things here, for those who don’t know me yet or who don’t have a better way to contact me yet (start with my first name at billstevenson.org), as well as to share some things I think you’ll enjoy.
May 15th, 2007 at 1:25 pm
What a wonderful start with your new blog. It took so much thinking to arrange it as you have. I’d say (as the navy puts it) “you’re squared” away in most aspects of your future. I’ll not be happy with the geography, but the IM and the phone will do just fine, although I’ll need to lay my motherly eyes on you now and again. Just know that your family is behind you 100% in your endeavors, but you will most certainly be missed by all. Especially from your only Mom.
May 15th, 2007 at 3:29 pm
Am I chaff? I sometimes feel like chaff…just blowin in the wind. Please tell me I am not chaff as I would hate to be relegated to that level. Enjoy the Left Coast! Be sure to get up to Oregon Dunes National Park and Whistler!
May 15th, 2007 at 7:53 pm
I suspect that I will keep you around Justin, so long as my sister does. For whatever reason, she does not appear to have grown tired of you yet. I must admit, even I’ve become somewhat fond of you, though mostly because you didn’t mess up the DNA too bad in making Jackson. I guess we’ll see who Liam is more like… My money’s on the UPS guy.
May 16th, 2007 at 3:03 am
I have to say, that is so alien to my way of thinking. I never delete data (and seldom throw anything away). This way, when the singularity hits, I’ll be able to take all my data with me when humanity abandons its physical form. (I like to be prepared.
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May 16th, 2007 at 8:22 am
Well, so far I’ve re-posted Google cache versions of my famous PHP and MySQL on tiger articles to my 404 page. I’ll want to type up some nicer new ones to replace that in the near future. I know that I had a bunch of things of value, and I even backed up my blog for when the singularity hits, but in any event the pros of making a fresh start for me outweigh the cons of not having people find my “one out of five dentsists think you shouldn’t chew gum at all” essay.
To me, there’s nothing more satisfying than a freshly-formatted hard drive, provided you get to keep just the things that you want to keep. For me, so long as I still have my thesis, my email, my music, and some of my digital photos, I’m all set. I presently have homework from highschool, college, and grad school (in two departments!) scattered around my machine. I really don’t need this anymore. My father tells me I have binders full of notes from elementary and/or high-school, things like Algebra I that I really doubt I’ll need to refer back to. So, it’s time to dump some of these things. Sure, I’ll take a core sample of mementos to show my children my life, but my basic feeling is that if I cling to too much, I’ll never have really grown up.
May 16th, 2007 at 9:16 am
[...] the car has to do with restoring some simplicity to my life, which I alluded to as a goal in my previous post. As a mass transit commuter, I’ll be kinder to the environment. As a person who will have to [...]
May 21st, 2007 at 5:10 pm
“my basic feeling is that if I cling to too much, I’ll never have really grown up”
Thanks for the reminder… I’m sitting here amidst piles and piles of junk from the past 21 years of my life as I get ready to pack up what I can fit in the car to head to D.C. and I’m starting to realize “you can’t take it with you” is more accurate than I’ve liked to believe.