Puzzle pieces / Pixabay.com
Since it’s been a while, here’s what happened the past few months:
  • I quit my job.
  •  I married the cute young man who’s turned my world upside down and all around with selfless love and bountiful joy. Marriage is truly a beautiful thing!
  • I moved house, for obvious reasons.
  • I had a chance to sail again! Though it was only 2 weeks, it felt good to be back at sea… and with a husband this time.
  •  With my marrying and my sister gone overseas to study, my family has been adjusting to this new situation of “separated lives”.
  • I’m branching out to be a full-time freelance writer.
As you can see, it’s been a transition period. It’s an amazing transition, one for which I’m grateful and excited every single day. But transition also means a time of unsettledness. I’ve been lugging a suitcase too often, and my possessions are helter-skelter. It sometimes feels like my life has been divided into little puzzle pieces that are waiting to be put together. So last week, for the first time in a very long time, I determined to start taking stock.

Simply put, it’s spring cleaning time!

Actually, it started off with just needing to move things over to my new place. But the more I look at my stuff, the more I realize that there’s plenty of things I could do without – things I don’t want wasting precious real estate! Also, the thought of my husband possibly passing out from the sight of all the random things I’ve kept is an undesirable one.

As it is with spring-cleaning, it can be fun going through old stuff you forgot, like drawings given by kids I taught, and school papers (My ambition was to be an artist?! Since when?). Then there are the shocking discoveries (Floppy disks! Oh the days when… Wait, whose Taylor Swift CD is that?) and things you wish you could throw but can’t (Why are you made out of such good stuff? Rust already!).

By week's end, I’ve managed to build a worthy pile to throw or recycle. It's only Phase 1, but as a sentimentalist and hoarder-in-denial, it’s a small victory. *pats self on back* 

You may wonder why I’m taking the time to tell you this. To me, though, this push to take stock taught me that as much as I want to treasure every single memory from the past, they’re just that – the past. The number of things kept from then cannot return the day. Yet it doesn’t mean that it’s to be forgotten. It means that one should embrace and appreciate a moment as it happens. This reminds me of a scene in The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, when photographer Sean O’Connell hesitated to take a picture of the snow leopard:

 Walter Mitty: When are you going to take it?
Sean O'Connell: Sometimes I don't. If I like a moment, for me, personally, I don't like to have the distraction of the camera. I just want to stay in it. 
Walter Mitty: Stay in it? 
Sean O'Connell: Yeah. Right there. Right here.

Another lesson learned is to ask honest questions about what I truly value. Though there are many things I want, there are only few that I need. Being on a near-constant mode of travel has taught me that I can live on considerably little, and that little gives me more contentment than the many that could ever provide.

In other words, I’m in the process of sorting through the puzzle pieces, throwing away the ones that don’t belong, and slowly fitting the right ones together. It’s like a detox. And this detox is a good step taken for this year - to simplify, consolidate, and focus on the things that matter.