Lost in Transition

This was my last day to work at FUMC, or fumcitusa as my youth affectionately call it. I spent the majority of the day packing up my office with Jodie. I took home boxes filled with books, papers, junk, and stuff. (Jodie would say it was mostly junk.) Now I need to figure out what to do with all the things in those boxes.

A few objects will be used around the house, some stuff has already found a home on the walls of our garage, and eBay will soon see portions of my collection I'm sure. Still, I know I'll end up storing a lot of it because who really needs some of these things? For instance, who needs a Brannock device, an extending fork, or a book on Methodist altars written nearly 40 years ago? Who wants an old Tippmann, three score of pencils, a suburban Christian hip hop artist's album, or a racquetball in a tube sock? Are people clamoring nowadays for maps of Irving circa 1986, copies of The Pilgrim's Progress, Bible studies on backsliding, or fir tree scented candles? Who in their right mind would want to keep a broken A-Rod bobble head doll, an old black and white printer with hard-to-find ink cartridges, or out-of-date issues of Plugged In? What am I going to do with all this stuff?

Well, I did actually throw away a lot of things including the bobble head, printer, and old magazines. (So, by my own defintion I'm still in my right mind.) But it's hard to get rid of everything. I'm not sure what I'll end up needing or using in the future and I wouldn't want to just throw away something that could be useful to me or someone else. I guess I'm just feeling a little lost in transition, not knowing where to proceed next. Once I get my bearings figured out, I should be alright. I should know better what to save and what to toss out. It's just this in-between period that has me unsure about these items sitting in boxes left over from my former job. And on top of that I also have things from my days of teaching that I had stored in my office. So the stuff in those boxes represent the last eight plus years of my life. That's a lot of time packed into cardboard and sealable containers waiting to be experienced again or to be stored away indefinitely.

Maybe it's not the boxes that I'm unsure about.