All my life I have been a hoarder. Not a greedy person and not a person who keeps things from others, but a person who holds onto everything. I have always been a person who puts special things in boxes and waits for a day to use them. One might even say “a rainy day”, but in my case it’s more like “the perfect day”. I remember getting a sheet of stickers from my mom when I was a little girl and I was so concerned about wasting them on silly things that I never used them. I found them a year later in a box (surprise suprise)in the back of my nightstand drawer and they had been wasted because I’d never used them and they had lost their sticky quality. My sister spent an entire summer sorting through old photos, cutting them up and making a beautiful scrapbook out of them. I have a box full of scrapbook materials, but have never started on one because I am afraid that I will mess up a page or miss use a sticker. While this may seem like a very random rant, I do have a point.
It has only been within the last few years that I have started to realize that all of those years of hoarding stickers and never using them has been foolish. But changing is a slow and difficult process. It requires a lot of effort and vigilance and I am sorry to have to admit that I am prone to lazy spurts of regression in almost every aspect of my life.
I was upset this evening and I tend to tidy when I get upset. I don’t always clean, but I do a lot of reorganization, sometimes laundry and most definitely sorting clothes, my junk drawer(s), boxes from the back of my closet... Really anything I can get my hands on! It was while I was sorting and reorganizing that I noticed two empty picture frames on my dresser and another one on my nightstand. While the one on my night stand is a fairly recent acquisition, I have had the two on my dresser for several months. I have been waiting to find a picture that would be perfect for them. I have been hoarding the pictures I do have, foolishly not wanting to cut them up. I realized tonight that I don’t just do this with stickers and photos, but I tend to do this in most aspects of my life. I am so worried about messing something up that I don’t really try. I’ve become comfortable where I am and I’ve started to overlook my empty picture frames.
I have a lot of options before me at the moment about where I want my life to go and I have been scared and at times petrified about choosing an option! I’ve been scared of failure. It’s unoriginal I know, but it’s something I seem to be confronted with a lot. Please understand I’m not often confronted with failure itself, just the fear of it. That fear keeps me from wanting to try at all. With regard to my current options I have found myself dodging well-intentioned questions from friends and family about my future plans. I’ve been feeding so many people excuses that I’m starting to wonder what I really think about it all. To be honest… I don’t know what I think, but I’d like to figure it out and soon! I’ve decided to start using my stickers! (Literally and figuratively… hopefully my readers will be able to follow my metaphorical leap!) If I make a mistake and do waste a sticker or mis-cut a photo… well, at least I didn’t waste the opportunity to use it!
