Putting Stuff in Storage

I said I'd post a new entry every Thursday.  I lied.

Apparently, time's gotten away from me.  I don't know what I've done these last several weeks.  I don't know how long it's been since I accomplished anything.  I think I just checked out for a while.  Life went on.  I lived it. I did not think too deeply on it.

I finished the novel and sent a copy to my fiance for review.  He's been busy at work so it'll take a while.  The day before yesterday I went through the kitchen and pulled out all the implements and appliances that we won't be using once we're situated in the gypsy wagon.

It was a lot of stuff.  Several pots and pans.  Several cooking appliances.  More dishes than not.  Most of the silverware.  All of it is going into storage.  And more.  Today I hope to take it to my in-laws so we can start clearing out the apartment.  We have less than a month left before it's time to move out.

I read an interesting article on backpacking http://survivalblog.com/2012/02/all-you-need-to-good-you-can-carry-on-your-back-by-charles-m.html  By the way G.O.O.D. stands for "get out of dodge".  I had to look that up.  It was a very interesting article, and it definitely helped me reanalyze how I've been looking at the gypsy wagon.

There was a point at which I understood a transition would have to take place, but I couldn't quite wrap my mind around it.  I would have to put away in storage most of our belongings.  It sounds like a very simple statement of fact, but until I was actually going through the kitchen asking myself, "Keep or store?" over every item I touched, I didn't fully understand it.

I'm very excited about our life in the gypsy wagon.  I've finally stopped being afraid of parting ways with all our Stuff.  We aren't crippling ourselves.  We aren't short-changing ourselves.  We aren't giving up anything we can't live without.

We're simply cutting out all the excess.  And there's so much excess in this world.  In our lives.  And our lives already very simple compared to most.

For all I know we'll live in the gypsy wagon for a month or two before we've gotten completely sick of living so low-tech, but it will be an experience.  I think it might even prove to be an experience worth having.  The world seems full of things no one understands.  Where does my food come from?  Where does my water come from?  Where does my waste go?

But now I'm rambling.  (I woke up just a short while ago.)  So I'll stop for now.  Today I want to put a bunch of kitchen stuff in storage, and I'd like to go through my clothes and separate the clothes I actually wear from the clothes I don't.

That is if I don't fall back asleep first.

P.S. Woke up feeling very peaceful today.  I wish I could feel this peaceful every day.  I hope all the rest of the world gets a chance to feel this peaceful.  It's nice.  I hope I don't forget it.

Introspection

The last time I was at work, several of my customers advised me not to be honest on my resume for whatever future job I might pursue.  "If you tell someone what you've done (exotic dancing), they're going to want to fuck with you."  "So?" "Maybe I should be clearer.  They're going to want to fuck you.  If I didn't know you, I wouldn't hire you.  No one in corporate America would want to hire you."

As usual, my customers have the sweetest way of lending me their vote of confidence.  While I'm not necessarily inclined to believe them until I've tried and failed to get a traditional job myself, there's a part of me that's relieved.

I don't know how well I'd fare in a traditional job anymore.  I'm far too accustomed to being my own boss.  Maybe this will become my excuse not to waste times pursuing the traditional job-seeking model.

I don't know what to do next, though.  It's been suggested to me, and I have to agree, that our generation seems to be saturated with this sense of entitlement, regardless of our lot in life.  We've all been raised to believe we're secretly meant to be the superstar.  No one remembers that we all need someone to flip our hamburgers.  I haven't decided which of those two categories I'm ultimately destined for.  (Most likely I'll end up somewhere in between.)

But is my insistence on finding a job that suits me a symptom of the entitled attitude of my generation or is it my own perfectionistic tendency to demand that I'm always climbing to newer levels of acheivement?

Honestly, I have a cold, my nose is stuffy, and I don't care anymore.

I've spent the last couple days going over my novel.  Again.  It's beautiful.  But is it perfect?  Nothing's perfect.  And this will never be perfect enough for me.

I just keep running through it looking for flaws.  Again and again.  How am I ever going to publish this thing if I don't stop editting?

I'll finish this draft tonight.  After that, I'll have to give it to someone to read.  Probably my fiance.  And while he's reading it, I'm going to run to work so I don't have to pace around the apartment feeling uncomfortable while someone reads my less than absolutely perfect novel.