A second, more interesting post (or I hope more interesting)

So, I'm in the office, and I've been cleaning out files and am starting on the bookcases. Along the way, I've been throwing out all the stuff I was keeping because I had needed it in the past for some reason (a year-end evaluation, a promotion application, whatever)--including stuff that I would have needed this year, if I'd stayed long enough to do another year-end evaluation. And I keep feeling little waves of freak-out that I'm throwing the stuff away. "Wait! I might need that!"

I also ran across the form granting me reassigned time for the fall (well, actually for the whole year, but we didn't know I'd be leaving when I applied for it). We're supposed to write a report at the end of each semester about what we did with the time and why it was useful. I didn't. Little "I'm being a bad girl" freak out--but then I thought, "What are they going to do, fire me?"

I also came across one of my very first academic publications, in the conference proceedings for a conference I went to in September 2001, something like ten days after the World Trade Towers were bombed. (And I vividly remember the vague sense of dread getting on a plane--and the faint horror of flying over the site: brightly lit, smoldering, covered with workers and heavy equipment, digging through the rubble.) It's not much of a piece, a little pedagogy thingy, but even so, I had a little of that, "You know, I write pretty well" feeling. I've had that more powerfully in the past, re-encountering something I've published and thinking, "Wow, I wrote that??" Hardly that, in this case, but it was still gratifying to think, "Hey, you know, I used to be able to think."

I realize, too, as I embark on this process, that cleaning out the file cabinets is going to be pretty daunting--unless I bite the bullet and simply throw everything away: don't salvage folders; don't worry about whether I might want it again; just put everything--everything--directly in the recycling bin. I'm not sure I can quite bring myself to do that, but ... well, it might be an interesting exercise in shedding weight I don't need to carry around with me, literally or metaphorically. (And as I write that, I'm looking at some things on my bookshelf--gardening books, a book for a German class, old editions of MLA--and thinking, "Those can just go straight to the radiator or to recycle." I tend to hold on to books pretty fiercely, but really: most of them I haven't so much as glanced at in millennia. So why am I hanging on to them? I won't notice they're gone.

And there are all the office supplies I've accumulated: do I want them for any reason? Paper clips and staples and staplers, maybe, but chalk? sheet protectors? And how many ring binders does a person really need to have on hand, just in case?

I probably have known for most of my life that I am something of a pack rat, but dear God in heaven, this is a revelation. "Something" of a pack rat indeed. I'm not quite at hoarding levels, I'm relieved to say, but I do hang on to a lot more than I ought.

And that doesn't just refer to physical objects, either. Metaphorically very, very true, across the board. So this whole retirement/relocating process is really a process of seeing how much I can let go. More than I suspect, is my hunch, but it will be interesting to see. And I am going to push myself right up to the very edge of what I can stand, too: If I'm at all on the fence about something, if I don't feel an instant and powerful "No! I want that!" then out it goes.

It's a strangely insecure feeling, as if, without all that weight, I could just disappear in a puff of breeze. But no: the substance is not, in fact, substantial: it's the intangible stuff that provides all the roots I will ever need. Still, strange to experience. Very strange.