M. Suzanne Terry

The novel is started.  My characters are self-absorbed jerks, so I might have to give them a nice social cause  or a back story that justifies their jerkiness, just to keep from killing one of them off soon.

Their misbehavior, of course, played right into the Seventh Annual National Novel Procrastination Weekend.  I’m not avoiding writing!  May it never be!  I’m merely avoiding murdering one of the little bastards in my story.

And that closet wasn’t going to organize itself.

In doing so, I have stumbled upon an epiphany:  I have a whole lot of stuff that I never use.

No one needs this many t-shirts.  If I wore a different shirt every day, without any repeats, I probably wouldn’t have to do laundry until mid-January.  I wish I were exaggerating.

I have two more loads of laundry that I’m not going to do today, because if I did, I wouldn’t have any place to put the clean clothes.  My closet and drawers are overflowing.

On the one hand – oh, what magnificent abundance!

On the other, freakishly larger hand – oh, what frightening excess!

One might say, “Why don’t you just go in there now and get rid of half of it?  What’s the big deal?”  Clearly one has never met me, or if one has, one is quite mean-spirited and is trying to bait me.

I have control issues with getting rid of things when I don’t know that those things will be used and not just tossed in the trash. Sure, I made this pile:

But I am already second-guessing my choices, wondering if they’re good enough that someone will actually want them and get some use out of them, or if they will end up being tossed in the garbage after a year because the good people at the thrift store need to make room for other items.  It helps that two of the shirts are going to the desk, where I know the part-timers will fight over who gets to take them, because they have to wear a UNT shirt at the desk, and none of them have been working in Housing as long as I have, so they’ll welcome the extra shirt.

I know this is good.  This is something I need to do.  Still, it gives me anxiety.

Anxiety is no excuse for impeding progress, though.  So every month, I am going to get rid of at least ten items of clothing.  I’m going to continue this monthly practice until my closet and dresser can actually hold everything.  And if I buy something new, I have to get rid of a comparable item before I can welcome the new one to the fold.

Okay.  Now back to those pesky teenagers.