Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Spring Cleaning

I woke up this morning and the first thought I had was, "What a fucked up dream". Then I moved and my stomach and balls hurt. Ouch. Then my heart hurt. Ouch. It wasn't a dream.

That means no gym for me today. I have a shoot in about 2 weeks and I really wanted to push it before then, but I need to heal from this injury first. It's actually a little better today so I don't think it will take that long. Hopefully, I will be back at the gym tomorrow. I was also supposed to have a practice rehearsal for the Sir/Boy competition show I am helping a friend with. Unfortunately, I had to let him down today and cancel.

So I am spending the day doing Spring Cleaning. Time to clean the trash that's been cluttering up my house and my life. The photo above shows a huge garbage bag of tapes that I've had for decades now. They are basically the soundtrack to my life in the 80's and beyond. Every tape I looked at had a person, place or situation attached to it. Wow. It's amazing how much we have locked away in the file cabinets in our brain. I thought about donating them to a thrift store, but they don't even take them any more. So into the trash bags they went.

I'm trying not to focus on the recent hurt to my heart. A friend of mine, who has been going through some rough times lately, sent me an email today about my new heartache with the subject header... "Life Sucks!" I wrote this back to him...

"I'm trying not to get down or get stuck obsessing about it. I have too much to do right now to do that and no good comes of it. So I'm not going to go with the title of your email... "Life Sucks!". Life doesn't suck. Sometimes people suck and sometimes situations suck. Life is beautiful. It's a gift. It's temporary. I'm not going to get stuck wasting it on anger and bitterness. I'm not saying it's easy. It's hard to move forward when you feel like the rug got pulled out from under you... again... and you feel like a fool... again... and you really just want to crawl up in a ball and fade away. But I'm not going to do that."

So it's time for Spring Cleaning. Getting rid of the old, no longer useful things, and making room for bright new things.

7 comments:

J said...

I went through something similar recently when I finally got rid of my VHS tape collection. So many memories of watching those movies in high school and early college. I still remember how excited I was to get the Star Wars trilogy when it was finally released...my nerdy friends and I must have watched those things dozens of times.

Anonymous said...

You are so right Nick! The sun comes up every morning [weather permitting]! We are alive and healthy; we have shelter and food! It is not a bad start for the day at all! The rest is what we make of it!

Jambrea said...

That is a great attitude. Keep with it. :)

Robert A. Geise said...

Wow, two Eurythmics tapes right on top! Depeche Mode, a-ha... talk about memories. My cassettes are still in a copy-paper box in the crawlspace in the attic. There be lots of Thompson Twins, Bronski Beat, and the Smiths, as well as lots of "cassingles"—remember those? Ha!

Stan said...

I need to get rid of a lot of that crap too.
That's a great attitude to have Nick if you can maintain it. That's what I have a problem with.

Anonymous said...

Stan - you need better drugs. LOL!

gpcrush said...

Catchng up with Depeche Mode, Hunting High and Low, and!! and Songs from the Big Chair on Cassette!! Shit was that Cat People!!!

Baby, I love you. I suppose i needed to come visit before you threw out the classics. I will listen to all those albums (mp3s) and send you happy thoughts!

Missing you. much.

xx

Word verification: diffho ha ha ha