About this time each year, I look at my stuff. Goodwill Industries gets a lot of my physical stuff, and gets a lot more this year as two of my three kids are ensconced in colleges not in this same town. My third got the last of her college applications out yesterday morning. So I’ve been donating the “parenting” pieces of my life to go to other families.
However, this also is the time of year that I re-open my paper and digital files and find things I wrote from years past. I seem to be a information hoarder. It is like an archaeological dig. I find the “me” of times past writing to the “me” of now. And I find that my themes remain the same — and yet I seem to not have been fully listening to the “me” of 2009 and 2011. She really wanted to build programs that I have yet to truly build.
I also made a big mess by pulling out my old project files from the past 3-4 years . . . and I find similar unrequited themes. I also found many of my files from the start of my doctoral journey . . . and other unrequited work. Time to requite this year!
My next saga over the next day or so is the same archaeological dig of my own digital life and work. . . the keywords and collections . . . the digital detritus of a live digitally lived. I’ve created new themes and gatherings of ideas for my planned 2015 work — I’ll see what the “me” of the past continues to say to “me” in the days ahead.
